Tarragona Cruise Terminal Hosts Pilot Project Offering Passengers an Immersive Virtual Reality Experience
The initiative, driven by the company Timeport, has allowed cruise passengers to fly over Roman Tarraco and see how the UNESCO World Heritage site originally looked. The aim is for the activity to enhance the terminal experience and serve as a complement to visiting the city, helping to contextualize the current archaeological remains.
Port Tarragona’s cruise terminal has hosted an immersive experience that shows what ancient Tarraco looked like through virtual reality (VR) glasses. Timeport, the company behind this proposal, has agreed with Tarragona Cruise Port, the terminal operator, to run a pilot project offering its services to cruise passengers. The experience offers a flight over the city, based on a meticulous historical reconstruction, allowing participants to see how some of the monuments currently recognized as UNESCO World Heritage originally appeared.
The purpose of this initiative is to make the waiting time in the terminal more enjoyable for embarking and disembarking passengers, and to help transit passengers visiting Tarragona better understand the archaeological remains and how they have shaped the modern city.
For this pilot project, the terminal was equipped with 13 VR headsets and a dedicated experience area. One set of headsets offered a one-minute mini version of the full virtual tour of Roman Tarraco, allowing any traveler passing through the facility to sample the immersive experience before purchasing a ticket for the complete session.
The experience is already available at a venue in Tarragona’s Part Alta. With this pilot, both Timeport and Tarragona Cruise Port will assess the possibility of offering this activity to other cruise ships in the future.
A 3D Flight Over Tarraco
Cruise passengers who tried the experience were able to fly over Tarraco as it was in 162 AD and see how it was the most prominent city in all of Hispania. Using virtual reality, they could closely explore iconic sites such as the Circus, the Provincial and Colonia Forums, and the city walls, as well as learn how buildings that no longer exist, like the Temple of Augustus (currently the site of the Cathedral), may have looked.
A Complement to Visiting the City
This initiative is designed to complement the experience of cruise passengers in Tarragona. On one hand, it makes waiting at the terminal for embarkation and disembarkation more enjoyable and engaging. On the other, the VR experience helps transit passengers visiting the city by offering historical reconstructions that allow them to visualize ancient Tarraco and put the UNESCO World Heritage site into context.
This pilot project is part of Tarragona Cruise Port’s ongoing commitment to improving passenger experiences. Notably, in a satisfaction survey conducted by EURECAT for the previous season, the Tarragona cruise terminal received a rating of 9.1 out of 10, highlighting the qualitative leap achieved with the construction of these facilities, which have marked a turning point in the cruise project in the region.
