Winter Gardens Virtual Venue Tours
An immersive virtual experience showcases Blackpool’s famous Winter Gardens to customers worldwide
The well-loved and historic Winter Gardens event space in Blackpool is as famous as the iconic Tower or the legendary Pleasure Beach. Boasting ballrooms, meeting spaces, auditoriums, halls, lounges and a dedicated conference and exhibition centre, it’s one of the premier event spaces in the North West.
The team at Winter Gardens approached us to create an immersive virtual brochure to showcase the space to potential clients in the UK and around the world. So that’s what we did.
We shot high-quality 360 imagery of every event space within Winter Gardens, from the grand Empress Ballroom to the prestigious Opera House, and the intimate Renaissance Room to the relaxed Derham Lounge.
Most people who book Winter Gardens aren’t based in the North West. So we brought the venue to life in VR in a way that event planners can use any time, in any place, to explore and get a feel for the beautiful venue.
Starting from street-level outside, we showcase the historic building within its surroundings. Clicking through the front door takes the user to the grand central foyer, with multiple options to explore the cavernous space and get a feel of how the venue flows.
Whether it’s the beautiful Floral Hall or the elegant Pavilion and Horseshoe, users can bring up room information, including capacity and additional pictures, as well as close or open doors, and see rooms in different states, to help visualise their event.
As well as navigating the venue using the arrows and exploring the space via a browser or VR headset, an interactive map can be opened to move quickly between areas and get a sense of scale. For further convenience, a hierarchical side menu provides easy access to all other rooms.
We’ve worked with Winter Gardens for several years. It’s a relationship built on trust and our ability to showcase their venue in innovative and immersive ways. Approaching 150 years old, the building has changed based on new trends and evolving requirements for event planners.
It still is. And our VR tour can change with it.
Knowing that it would need to be updated and expanded over its life, the VR tour is completely modular and future-proofed. When the decor changes, the information needs to be updated, or the imagery needs a refresh, we can shoot new 360 video and drop it straight in. We don’t need to rebuild the entire tour from scratch, just make iterative updates.
This is vital for the team at Winter Gardens to remain a premier venue in the UK. It hosts everything from ballroom dancing to live darts, concerts to trade shows, and meetings to banquets.
As a testament to its importance as a conference and exhibition centre, Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Conservative Party have all used Winter Gardens for annual party conferences. The owners also claim every Prime Minister since the Second World War has addressed an audience within its walls.
The immersive VR tour is proving its value as a sales and marketing tool. Potential clients from all over the world can see and feel the venue, moving around it to understand how their event could work. Even for those closer by, exploring such a vast building takes time out of already busy schedules.
Event planners can explore Winter Gardens and contact the venue directly from the tour for more information and to organise an in-person viewing.
If your space would benefit from the Circus touch, don’t hesitate to contact us today.
