The statistics this industry repeats, and why we will not
None of the percentages this industry circulates could be traced to a source we were able to open. Not the 37% more views, not the 130% more likely to book, not the 67% more direct bookings, not the 49% more qualified leads. We went looking for each one and this post reports what we found, which is mostly nothing. Then it lists what we publish instead: figures counted out of tours we built, and a rate card. If a number would help our sale and we cannot check it, it does not appear on this site.
The figures, and what we found
These are the ones we met most often while researching this market. In every case we tried to reach the page the figure is attributed to and read the method behind it. The third column is what actually happened, in our own verification pass.
| The figure | Attributed to | What we found |
|---|---|---|
| 37% more views for a listing with a 3D tour | A large US property portal | Every request to that domain was refused. We could not open any page carrying the figure; it appears to us only in search snippets |
| 18–34s are 130% more likely to book with a virtual tour | An events technology company | The trail ends at a marketing agency’s page, reached through a third blog. A citation of a citation, with no study at the end of it |
| Hotel tours raise direct bookings by 67% | A provider’s own homepage, in this region | No source, no citation and no link anywhere on the page it is published on |
| 49% more qualified leads | A camera manufacturer’s blog | Search snippets only. We could not load a page on that site carrying it |
| 31% faster sales and 87% more inquiries | A North American capture studio | Published on a blog posting several templated city pages an hour. No method, no sample, no date |
| Eleven percentages across four named client case studies | A US capture studio | We could find no trace of the four named businesses outside that one page |
This table reports the result of our own attempts to reach each source. We are not naming the two competitor blogs in the last rows; the figures are what matter and both are easy to find.
What they have in common
- No method. Nothing says what was measured, against what, or over what period.
- No sample. No count of listings, properties, bookings or respondents.
- No date. A conversion figure without a year is not a fact about anything.
- No primary link. The trail, where there is one, ends at another blog rather than at a study.
- Convenient direction. Every one of them argues for buying the thing the publisher sells. We have never once seen a circulating figure that made the case against.
That last point is the one to hold onto. The distribution of these numbers is not what you would expect from measurement. It is what you would expect from selection.
The thing we will not do about it
We are not going to answer an unsourced percentage with a better-looking unsourced percentage. It would work, probably — a specific number beats a careful sentence in almost every sales conversation. It is also the entire mechanism by which this industry ended up with a shared body of statistics that nobody can trace, each one laundered by being quoted one more time.
What we publish instead
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| 17 | Tours delivered and published, all of them public and ungated |
| 12 | Named buildings, each with its own project page and a live link |
| 324 | Camera positions across those tours |
| 1,614 | Overlays placed on panoramas, of every kind |
| 1,441 | Of those, navigation arrows |
| 696 | Distinct connections, once duplicate arrows within a panorama collapse |
| 146 | Information popups |
| 51.7% | How much the arrow count shrinks when destinations are counted instead |
| 2.15 | Distinct connections per camera position, ranging from 1.50 to 2.43 |
None of these is a claim about your results. They are a description of work you can open in a browser and check.
That is a weaker kind of number in a sales conversation and a much stronger one in every other respect. It is checkable, it is ours, and no competitor can restate it without having counted their own archive first. The dataset is in seventeen tours in numbers and the method is in why we counted.
What we do not know about your bookings
We do not measure your bookings. We do not have access to your booking system, we do not receive your analytics — those events go to your own property, not ours — and no client has yet given us an outcome figure with a stated method and permission to publish it. So we have no uplift number, and we would rather say that plainly than imply one. If a client ever supplies one, it will appear with their name on it and the method beside it, or it will not appear.
What a tour demonstrably does is let somebody see a room before they travel to it. Whether that produces bookings in your building is a question about your building, your market and your prices, and the honest answer is that we cannot tell you. The related argument about commission, which is arithmetic you own rather than a statistic we invented, is in direct bookings against OTA commission.
How to test any number you are shown
Ask where it comes from
Not “is it true” — ask for the page. A supplier who quotes a figure in a proposal can be expected to have opened its source.
Open the source yourself
Follow it all the way. If each link is another blog post quoting the same sentence, you have found a chain rather than a study.
Look for a method and a sample
What was measured, against what, and how many. A percentage with neither is a claim about nothing.
Check the date
A conversion statistic from an unstated year, in a market where nearly everything about how people search changed in the last two, is not evidence.
Ask who wrote it
Search’s own guidance on helpful content asks whether a page carries a byline and whether that byline leads anywhere. Most pages in this category do not.
Run those five steps on this post as well. The figures here are ours, the tours behind them are linked from projects, and the rates are on pricing.
Sources, and when we last checked them
- Vronos source-verification pass — each figure above was checked against the page it is attributed to Checked August 2026 Results are reported as found, including the ones where the page could not be opened at all.
- Google Search Central — “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content”, on bylines and self-assessment Checked August 2026
Questions people ask
- Do virtual tours increase bookings?
- We do not know, and neither does anyone quoting you a percentage. Every widely circulated figure in this industry — 37% more views, 130% more likely to book, 67% more direct bookings, 49% more qualified leads — failed to trace to a source we could open and read a method in. We do not measure our clients’ bookings, we have no outcome data with a stated method, and we will not publish an uplift number until a client gives us one with their name on it.
- Why does your site have no conversion statistics on it?
- Because we could not verify any of the ones this industry uses, and we are not willing to invent our own. Every number on this site is either counted out of a tour we delivered, calculated from our published rate card, or cited to a named source with a date and a link. That rules out conversion claims entirely, which costs us something in a sales conversation and is the reason the rest of the figures can be trusted.
- What numbers can you actually prove?
- The ones read out of the tours themselves: 17 delivered tours across 12 named buildings, 324 camera positions, 1,614 overlays of which 1,441 are navigation arrows resolving to 696 distinct connections, and 146 information popups. Every one of those tours is public and ungated, so the counts are checkable rather than asserted. We can also prove our prices, because we publish the whole rate card.
- How do I check a statistic a supplier quotes at me?
- Ask for the page it comes from and open it yourself. Follow the link chain to the end: if every step is another blog quoting the same sentence, there is no study behind it. Then look for a method, a sample size and a year. A percentage with none of those tells you what the publisher wants to be true, not what was measured.
