Though its roots extend back at least four decades, virtual reality is just now beginning to show the promise of the 1960s visionaries who recognized its possibilities.

VR had a mild re-emergence in the '90s, when we were captivated by the idea that a clunky helmet and some robotic-looking gloves could place us directly inside a video game. But the "reality" part of virtual reality never quite met with its potential.

VR splashed onto the scene again in 2014 when Facebook announced it was acquiring Oculus Rift for somewhere in the area of a gazillion dollars (it was actually about $2 billion). The fact that one of the planet's tech giants was onboard legitimized what had previously been more fiction than science. But, most important of all, technology was finally catching up to the fantasy.

Applications of virtual reality abound, with perhaps the most obvious being gaming and simulation — such as flight training for the military. With any technological advance, you can bet plenty of people are aiming to maximize its potential as a means of marketing, and maybe no industry is better poised to latch onto VR than travel.

"I think there are few industries more perfectly suited to leverage this than tourism," claims David Downing, executive director of Visit St. Pete/Clearwater (VSPC).

And that's exactly what Downing is hoping to do as the official destination marketing organization for Pinellas County, Florida.

"The experience is so unlike anything I've seen before; to be completely immersive everywhere you look in a 360-degree sphere is a new chapter, really," he added.

VSPC recently made waves at IPW, the U.S. Travel Association's premier trade show, by debuting its virtual reality experience.

"It got us some notice that we were trying something new," Downing said. "When this was demoed to me, I took the goggles off after 30 seconds and said, 'OK, we're doing this.' I saw the possibilities."

At the VSPC booth in Orlando, visitors stopped by to take a virtual stroll through a destination some 100 real miles away. Downing has no doubts the $20,000 the organization invested in the VR experiment was worth every penny.

"The experience of watching people in these headgear — we had 500 people come by just to try on the headset — the promotional value of being in that space at that time was huge for us."

But Downing's vision extends far beyond trade shows, and for good reason. With technology on the way up, and the price of that technology on the way down, the intersection of those two could spell "VR" for travel brands big and small, and an entirely new way for consumers to plan vacations.

"This is a game-changer," Downing said. "I think it's going to happen very rapidly."

Downing was so convinced of VR's potential that he established a Web team to oversee the VSPC's digital projects, including producing the videos. He estimated that everything the group needed totaled about $5,000 to $6,000.

The real payoff for VSPC will come in the near future, when VR headsets become common consumer gadgets, not unlike gaming consoles or tablets. Soon the virtual reality experience will take place in the average household, not just at an industry trade show.

Think it sounds far-fetched? Think again. Oculus plans to start selling its Rift headset to consumers in the first quarter of next year. Several other major tech players, including Microsoft, are also working on VR devices.

And to sweeten the allure for destination marketers, the VR files can be sent as simply as an email.

"This is a completely portable technology that’s digital and transferable," Downing explained. "You can have an inventory. I imagine DMOs having repositories or libraries of all kinds of experiences for their destination that visitors can view and download on their own."

And of course, not just the destination, but also the resorts and attractions. Hotels can offer virtual tours of rooms. Event planners can tour meeting spaces without the expense of visiting beforehand.

Of course, if slipping on a headset can effectively supplant you to a destination, it begs the question: Why would I need to actually visit then?

"Nothing will ever actually replace being there," Downing insists. "What this will do is exactly what photographs do and videos do right now, and that's to whet people's appetite to actually experience it firsthand."