Disclaimer: This is a paid posting, powered by trigami.

Second Life might be a household name for most people. For those who don’t know it: Second Life, briefly SL, is a virtual online world where you can make yourself a 3D human, called avatar. With your avatar you can discover the SL world, talk to other people and do all the things you can do in real life.

As first german tourist office at all, Gratistours.com now opened up a virtual store in Second Life. And that’s not all; Gratistours Island is a little holiday world. As a peripatetic prospect you can visit your travel destination in advance. You want to fly above the pyramids? No problem! You can have a little foretaste in the Video “A Second Life Holiday“.

On the information page about Gratistours Island you can also watch the video and a few snapshots of the Island. So let’s fly to Gratistours Island and have a look at the island!

Arrived at Gratistours Island, the friendly tourism manager Jas Capalini welcomes me. From afar you can see the big building and the flatscreens with the company logo upon. Miss Capalini is really very nice and watching the beautiful island makes me think about having a holiday right now.

First I have a flip around the island and a look from above. On the right we have the building, on the left a waterfall with an adjoining sea. The island is belted by a lot of trees and bushes with tropical flowers. Let’s take a photo!

Now I return to the building. I have a little talk to Miss Capalini. The tourism manager guides the guests on Gratistours Island and advises them. If you don’t know where you want to travel yet, you can get a good advice here. So you can get an individual counsel in the internet, which is normally rather anonymous, and you can feel a bit safer. For those who are not that internet-fit yet it even eases the accounting process.

Once more look around? From the building you have the perfect view on the waterfall we just saw from above. By the way, you can also find some loungers next to the sea where you can relax and enjoy the sun.

But now it’s time to return to the real life and to sum up. The virtual tourist office pleases me a lot and I can really imagine to book a journey there. The trend to RL companies in SL already exists a bit longer, but travel offices are rather seldom – by now.

The target audience of Gratistours Island might surely be the young generation between 20 and 35 – this is the main audience of Second Life. Older people might have little use for the virtual island. That even looms in the online bookings: The number of bookings by users aged 25 – 33 years increased markedly, especially by female users.

By the way: Gratistours is planning to enlarge the community. Soon there will be a community on the internet page, where users can make themselves a profile and rate journeys. It will also be possible to upload holiday pictures and videos and to have a holiday blog. Retrieve a holiday love? Who knows, why not!

If now you have a mind to visit the island, you can do that here. If you aren’t registered on SL yet, subscribe here and download the software. Have fun!