A New Life at Sea: The Maritime Industry in the Metaverse

The Metaverse promises to be the next extraordinary digital phenomenon that will revolutionize how we communicate.

Rooted in the hopes of emerging technological advances, Meta's chairman Mark Zuckerberg believes it will enable users to play, work, and travel in virtual environments seamlessly. The maritime industry is just one of the industries that benefit most from the Metaverse.?

Socializing.

While social media allows you to interact with people worldwide, it falls short of replicating the experience of actual connection. The Metaverse can change that.

While enabling seafarers to connect and communicate from opposite ends of the globe, it does not put them into small, text-only conversations where things can get lost in translation. The Metaverse, on the other hand, simulates real-world interactions. When meeting with another seafarer on the Metaverse, it will look and feel like you are meeting them in the real world.?

Even more excitingly, the Metaverse will allow seafarers to meet their fellow seafarers beforehand, allowing relationships and friendships to develop before they even board their ships. It will also allow them to keep in touch with each other more fully after they disembark.

Operations.

By fostering completely remote positions and combining human intuition with hyper-fast computer processing, the Metaverse will flip all preconceived notions about management and operations on their heads. Instead of relying on managers aboard the ship to make decisions, seafarers can communicate with anyone from anywhere in the world.

With the help of the Metaverse, we will experience unprecedented productivity levels. For the maritime industry, the Metaverse will become a catch-all tool: any time you are in doubt about what you should do to help your crew, you can turn to the Metaverse.

Selling.

When navigating an ultra-competitive industry - which the maritime industry most certainly is - you need to account for every single lead. Through the Metaverse, we can conserve these valuable professionals' energy. Instead of pushing sales and marketing professionals to do more and more for the maritime industry, we can set them up for tremendous success – by creating environments where they can meet with more leads and deliver more convincing presentations.

Imagine this scenario: a lead calls one of your sales representatives, asking for a breakdown of what your company can do for them. It would have taken many hours or even days to move that lead through the sales cycle. You can reduce that time drastically by keeping the entire sales cycle digital. The Metaverse enables you to do that without sacrificing any of the personal, human connections your representatives need to build trust.

Learning.

Imagine that instead of watching a series of videos in your browser, you are sitting in front of the most accomplished figures in the maritime industry. They are explaining to you, step by step, the skills that you need to develop to make faster progress in your career. If you have a question, simply raise your hand, and the lesson will stop, as it would if you were in a real-world classroom.

Once seen as a futuristic, utopian delusion, this is no longer a pipe-dream. Maritime education and training are about to undergo the most significant change in its history.?

Transacting.

Another component of the Metaverse, which may not be as glitzy or glamorous as its other aspects, is decentralized finance. Made possible by the blockchain, decentralized finance (or DeFi, for short) is going to make our economic system substantially more efficient by removing issuing banks, creditors, and any other middlemen.

Doing business in the Metaverse will become more lucrative and profitable for the maritime industry. To ensure that these innovations benefit all, we can take full advantage of the transparency that the blockchain facilitates. Seafarers can see how much money their employers are earning – and then verify that they are receiving fair compensation for their labour, commensurate with industry standards.

Entertainment.

Seafarers today distract themselves by scrolling through social media. With the Metaverse, they can visit with their families, explore new countries, and experience different points of view, all from the comfort and security of their cabins.

On board a ship, there will be no limit to the interactive fun in the seafarers' quarters. Reading, playing video games, practising an instrument, even watching a movie at a theatre: all of these activities will be well within seafarers' reach in the limitless, fantastic environment of the Metaverse.

The future of life at sea.

Ultimately the Metaverse still has a long way to go before it's fully optimized, yet like any other tool, the Metaverse is neither good nor bad on its own. It is neutral, there for us to make of what we will. I encourage all seafarers to make something spectacular of it.?