As I guess we all know now, the online world Second Life has a very real-world co-existence. Hundreds of people have been able to give up their day job to start shops and services in virtual stores, trading self-made artefacts and properties for real world cash, though the medium of Linden Dollars. More than 3100 residents were earning a net profit of US$20,000pa by May 2006. PR man Steve Rubel has the scoop on one of the latest and most interesting business projects to emerge in the alter-universe:
Next month Starwood Hotels is going to preview a new hotel brand called Aloft inside the Second Life virtual world. The physical hotels will open to the public in 2008. They have launched a blog that shows how the virtual hotel is being created.
In response to a comment, I heard from Marc Schiller at Electric Artists, the company running the electronic side of the construction project. He hopes that this virtual town planning will allow the hotel’s architects to learn about any problems with their buildings before they are built:
We’re interested in seeing how people interact in the different areas of the hotel in the virtual world to see if there are learnings that can be used when building the real world hotel. If it turns out that there are, then this could indeed change the way architects and designers develop commercial property. By letting in “virtual guests”, we will, hopefully, learn what works and what doesn’t work. We’ll keep you posted on how it goes!
It’s a great idea. I’d love to see this as part of a trend to testing out public architecture — or even stuff as basic as home extensions — online in places where the public actually go. If virtual visitors get the chance to say “This is really ugly” , “My shop next door has been driven out of business because people can’t see me” or “I’m in a wheelchair, I can’t get in”, then it increases the chances of not making silly mistakes.
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