New tourism website offers three-dimensional views of Hawaii hotels, tourist attractions

New website offers 3-D views of Hawaii hotels

HONOLULU — A new website backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar says it can offer potential visitors to Hawaii the ability to view hotels and tourist attractions in three dimensions and from different angles in an interactive virtual tour.

Team Vision Virtual launched 3DHawaii.com on Thursday, promoting itself as the “next generation travel-planning and booking tool.”

It has signed up three dozen hotels and stores, which can be viewed on the website along with almost 2,000 beaches and tourist attractions — from Kilauea volcano on the Big Island to the Duke Kahanamoku statue in Waikiki.

Hawaii is the first of 10 states for which the Honolulu-based company plans to build similar 3-D portals, incorporating Google Earth technology.