The International Yachting Media presents YACHTING METAVERSE: an immersive augmented reality experience for boating enthusiasts
The Metaverse lands at the 
62nd Genoa International Boat Show with the absolute debut of YACHTING METAVERSE, the virtual space of The International Yachting Media in which it finds a perfect habitat to express its potential and the many facets that belong to this parallel world, increasingly present in our lives.
What is the Metaverse?
It is the latest evolution of the web, the ultimate goal of which is to combine the physical and digital worlds in an immersive manner, with the aid of virtual reality and with the aim of no longer just making us browse the web, but making us live it.
Although this phenomenon has already existed as a concept for a few decades, it has experienced an exponential boom in recent years: more than 3,400 companies in the world have already raised 47 billion in venture capital since 2018, to which must be added the investment programme presented by Microsoft and Meta, which is close to 80 billion euros.
This is a business volume of enormous proportions that, according to ‘Fortune’, will reach 800 billion dollars by 2024 and even 13 trillion dollars by 2030, the year in which, according to ‘Citibank’, the metaverse economy will represent 10% of the global gross domestic product.
While these assessments suggest a very rosy future, the Metaverse is already a concrete reality with applications in a variety of sectors such as healthcare, education, entertainment, e-commerce and more. So why not apply this concept to the boating industry as well?
This is the question
that Luca D’Ambrosio, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The International Yatching Media, asked himself five years ago and that he answered during the Genoa Boat Show by presenting the first application of the Metaverse in the boating sector, called YACHTING METAVERSE.
Accessible from any device using a simple App ( you can download the QR Code at the bottom of the article) or ‘liveable’ through VR viewers, stepping through the doors of YACHTING METAVERSE means entering a VRO environment specifically designed to provide customers or simple enthusiasts with a wide range of experiences: virtual boat tours, events and even Boat Shows accessible to everyone all year round.
This is a new way of enjoying data and content, created in the Metaverse, enabling virtual interactions with users from all over the world, with simultaneous translation, and much more..
“ The evolution is fast and bursting”, commented Sergio Cutolo, Owner of Hydro Tec, speaking at the meeting, “We have gone in recent years from making our designs on paper, then files, then 3D, and now the Metaverse. Virtual tours were already being used in our industry, but now both we and the customer can perceive the spaces right from the design. This is a big advantage, it allows us to work with clients on the other side of the world, speeding up processes and saving money and time”.
“Today – added Lorenzo Giovannazzi, Co-Founder of Felci Yacht Design“ -the Metaverse is a great tool from design to presentation to technique. This does not mean eliminating the human factor and the romance associated with our work, the hand of man remains as essential as the heart and the head, but technological support is now fundamental”.
Estimates, predictions, but also a lot of concreteness in this future that is literally materialising before our eyes through the Metaverse, and that as confirmed by numbers is destined to be increasingly present in our lives.
“The Metaverse is a new declination of an unstoppable evolution”, concluded Luca D’Ambrosio, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The International Yachting Media – “Our aim is not to replace reality, but to rationalize choices, riding the wave of progress. Trying to stop it is like trying to stop the waves of the sea with your hands: impossible”.
