Booking hotel rooms can be a real hassle, especially when the pictures online don’t actually match the real room. But now Expedia has a solution for that. Here’s what’s new…

The travel booking giant is using virtual reality technology to give people searching for hotel rooms a better first look. The company is hedging its bets on the hopes that as VR technology becomes more common in homes across the country, more hotels will be interested in advertising via the new technology.

In Expedia’s demo, users can walk around prospective rooms and inspect its features. Users are also able to interact with the room, in that they could slide open doors and step out onto the balcony.

VR is not the only technology with which Expedia is experimenting. The company also believes that the voice technologies used in devices like Amazon Echo are essential to providing better customer satisfaction in the future.

“I think voice is something that will become a part of how people interact with travel,” Expedia told Mashable. “So we’re continuing to experiment with voice, and chatbots — not only on the consumer side but also on the partner side, so our hotel clients can interact with us through such chats.”

Expedia’s embrace of new technologies is a good example of a company eager to stay ahead of the curve. VR and chatbots are still relatively new, but only by toying with them can companies like Expedia even begin to tap into their full potentials.

Even though Expedia wants people to use VR in booking rooms, the company is wary of people replacing actual travel with a simulated experience.

“I hope that VR in travel fails miserably because I want people to go places,” Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said at a 2016 Geekwire technology conference. “I think that VR can certainly play a part in your research in travel and your being inspired to go to amazing places on earth.”

Title photo via Mashable.