Virgin Australia Brings Google Street View Into Its Sydney Airport Lounge

Virgin Australia has collaborated with Google to create a new interactive tour of its Sydney airport lounge, letting passengers enjoy the facilities long before they reach the airport.

The Street View tour allows visitors to move freely through the lounge with a click of their mouse, even before they’ve booked a ticket.

“Google Street View is an innovative technology platform and allowed just to partner with a market leader and show off the architectural design features that define the Lounge environment, and also allows the user to find out some of the finer lounge details which really set Virgin Australia apart,” explains Libby Armstrong, Public Affairs, Virgin Australia.

The process was similar to that Google uses to create its other Street View maps–without the funny Google car. “We had someone from Google come in with a standard SLR camera,” says Armstrong. “He had to take about 5 or 6 photos in each spot of the lounge you can click to, in 360 degrees. After the shoot, he went away and had to stitch them all together to create the walkthrough.” It took approximately three weeks after the shoot for the Google team to have the lounge tour available online, Armstrong tells us.

The Virgin Australia Sydney lounge tour is detailed, allowing visitors to come close enough to check out the selection of goodies served in the buffet, and see all the other facilities the airline offers its passengers to work, rest and refresh between flights. Because it was produced by the Google Maps team, this interactive tour is easy to navigate and open at any time to visitors from all around the world.