An open day is one day; a campus is open all year
A physical open day has real strengths. Visitors feel the atmosphere, meet staff and see the labs running. It also has limits. It happens on one date, in one place, and the people who most need to see a campus may be furthest from it: applicants from other cities, students abroad, parents who cannot take a day off.
A campus virtual tour does not replace the open day; it extends it, and a good virtual tour for universities Jordan admissions teams run can be reused at every fair. It answers the question that comes before the visit, which is whether this campus is worth the journey, and the one that comes after, which is whether the student can remember which building held the engineering labs.
For universities, this matters more than for most organisations, because the decision is large, it is shared with a family and it is made over months. Our experience building a digital-twin campus for a Jordanian university is that the question to start with is not which technology, but which decision the tour should help a student and their parents make.
Levels of virtual campus tour
| Level | What the visitor does | What the university provides | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Self-guided 360 tour | Explores gates, faculties, labs, library and grounds at their own pace, with a campus map | Access for capture, a list of key spaces, short captions in Arabic and English | Every university; the foundation for the other levels |
| 2. Live virtual open day | Joins scheduled guided sessions, meets faculty, asks questions in real time | Hosts, a programme by faculty, a moderator and a follow-up plan | Admissions seasons; applicants abroad or in other cities |
| 3. Digital twin campus | Enters a persistent 3D campus as an avatar, attends classes and events | A modelled campus, identity and access rules, staff to run it | Universities seeking an all-year online presence and remote teaching |
Five things prospective students and parents look for
These reflect how families decide; they are our reasoning, not survey data.
Labs, studios and lecture halls
Show them in use or ready for use, at true scale, with the equipment a student will actually touch.
Where students study
Reading rooms, group study areas and quiet floors, because this is where students imagine spending their evenings.
Cafeteria, prayer rooms and transport
The facilities that shape an ordinary day. Parents ask about them before they ask about rankings.
Accessibility and safety
Ramps, lifts, routes between buildings and entrances. A tour that shows these builds trust with families.
Faculty and current students
Short video hotspots, or live sessions, with the people who teach and study there. Nothing persuades like a real voice.
Running a virtual open day in three stages
Before: design the day
Choose the audience, build pathways by faculty, script each tour stop and book hosts. Publish the 360 campus tour first so registrants can explore in advance.
During: host it live
Run scheduled sessions by faculty in a virtual space or live stream, with a moderator, faculty Q&A and a clear route to apply or book a visit.
After: follow up
Collect the questions asked, send each registrant the recording and the relevant faculty tour, and hand warm enquiries to admissions with the context.
Take the tour to the fair
Recruitment happens away from campus as much as on it: school visits, regional fairs, international education exhibitions. The tour should travel. On a laptop at the stand, a 360 tour lets a prospective student walk through your campus in a minute. On a Nplay Halo Box, an AI hologram guide can greet visitors, answer questions about faculties in Arabic or English and offer a route through the campus.
The box ships as a complete unit and works in a lit exhibition hall, and content can be changed from the cloud for each fair. That way a stand in one city can show engineering, and a stand in another can show medicine, from the same hardware. Our digital twin campus use case describes how these pieces fit together.
When a campus tour becomes a digital twin
A tour is something you visit; a twin is somewhere you are. In 2022 a Jordanian university signed to build a complete digital-twin campus inside an Arabic-language metaverse platform, with students and teachers present as avatars and learning supported by VR, AR and AI. Our team built it, and the case study records how.
A digital twin campus university Jordan institutions consider should be justified by teaching and community, not by recruitment alone. If you want remote classes, graduations and events in a persistent space, a twin is the right level. If you need applicants to see the campus, a 360 tour and a live open day cost less and deliver sooner. Our post on the digital twin campus explains what a university receives.
The levels build on each other. The survey and models made for a tour become the foundation of a twin, and virtual graduations and exhibitions can later run on Nplay Nexus, our virtual exhibition platform, which is in development.
A format still finding its audience
Virtual tours are projected to grow from about USD 0.96 billion in 2023 to about USD 8.4 billion by 2030 (27.9% CAGR), per Allied Market Research as cited in Nplay's market brief. For universities, the practical point is that a campus tour is becoming a normal part of how applicants research a choice, so having one is a question of when, not whether.
We will not quote enrolment or conversion figures, because we do not have independent ones. What we recommend is that you measure your own: registrations for a virtual open day, sessions attended, questions asked and the share of registrants who later apply or visit. Those numbers will tell you more than any industry average.
What to ask a vendor, and what to measure
- Which level do you recommend for our goals, and what would push us to the next?
- Does the tour open in a phone browser, with Arabic and English throughout?
- Who owns the models and the capture files, and can we update the tour ourselves?
- How are live sessions hosted, recorded and followed up?
- What will we measure: registrations, attendance, questions asked and applications?
Virtual tour for universities Jordan: frequently asked questions
Is a virtual tour worth it for a small university?
Usually yes at level one. A campus virtual tour in 360 is the lightest option and supports admissions, fairs and visitors to your website all year.
Do we need a digital twin to run a virtual open day?
No. A 360 tour plus live sessions is enough for most open days. The digital twin campus university Jordan teams ask about is for institutions that want a persistent online campus for classes and events.
Can the tour work for students abroad?
Yes. It opens in a browser anywhere, and live sessions can be scheduled across time zones and recorded for later viewing.
What do we need to provide?
Access for capture, a list of key spaces, short captions in Arabic and English, and a named person on your team who owns the tour after launch.