Virtual reality is transforming travel and hospitality. What started as nascent technology is poised to become, in business, a tool for promotions and advertising. For consumers, it’s a new way to plan: Imagine walking through a hotel room before you book, or exploring a location’s sights and sounds as you narrow down a shortlist of vacation destinations, all from inside your home and using your phone.

This isn’t a far-off technology, either. There are several virtual travel apps already available, and companies such as Qantas, British Airways, and Marriott have already started experimenting with it as a marketing tool. On the consumption end, YouTube and Facebook are just a handful of the major sites that now support 360-degree content.

But even if you have no plans to physically go anywhere, VR is a fantastic video-based medium for armchair wanderlust. It takes the Google Street View approach of dragging your mouse around 360-degree photos, and transforms it into an immersive experience in which you can explore those environments in greater detail. You can travel to places you may never be able to go (or want to), including destinations that are off-limits to tourists or simply dangerous. And when you add narration from a tour guide to those videos, the experience becomes that much greater.

While video resolution quality isn’t there yet — depending on the production quality, viewing through VR goggles and headsets can be nauseating — it’s getting better. As we experienced back in 2015 with Marriott’s “VRoom Service,” using the Samsung Gear VR, the audio-visual “sensory experience” did make us feel as if we’re there (pardon the cliché). Expect to see more content uploaded in the near future, including a mix of professional, high-quality videos and those shot by consumers on their phones or cameras.

So if you’ve purchased a VR headset with your new Galaxy phone, or were sent a cardboard viewer as part of a promotion, here are a few sites and apps that will give you a taste of virtual travel.

Update: Added Boulevard, Gala360, and Google Earth VR.

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