I am in travel industry since 2005 and I do not think VR will ever have widespread use in travel. 10-13 years ago many travel websites introduced technologies like video, 360° virtual panoramic views and virtual property walkthroughs, but soon later they got rid of them because they understood that simple photo galleries work better for travellers. Travellers do not have enough leisure time to consume all this multimedia/VR content.
This is quite an interesting research project. I believe that indeed VR is a great revolutionary piece of technology that has practical and theoretical implications for tourism research, especially in view of space-time compression it offers in relation to the way tourism is traditionally defined. Also, I don't think VR can replace (at least for now) the actual tourist experience. Rather, it does carry a strong marketing potential as it gets the consumer a step closer towards tangibilization of experiences prior to actual consumption, thus providing better evaluations of alternatives and reducing risks of dissatisfaction. VR can also provide a solution to current tourism issues such as limited accessibility (price, seasonality, VISA, safety concerns), tourists with limited mobility, and perhaps overtourism.
For a specific example, one can travel to France, Italy, New York, or Hawaii with virtual reality First Airline from Ikebukuro International Airport (essentially an office space in a building in Ikebukuro, Tokyo). Below is a provided link.
Again, VR is a long way from rivaling with actual travel, however, its destination marketing potential at the pre-visitation stage of the travel process is undeniable. I recently worked on a paper "Sampling-for-all: an inbound approach to travel experience". It addresses the implications that globalization and VR have on tourism definition and sample selection in tourist behavior research. The paper should be out by March 2020, but you can get in touch if you'd like to find out more about it.
Ivan Burmistrov thank you for your input. While I agree with you, that your arguments may be case in many instances, I believe that VR can get adopted in tourism industry for many wonderful uses, however, for that there's a need for more research to how we can use this technology properly in order to be accepted by our target audience (which are not ONLY travellers). That is what I would like to achieve with my VR, prove that for example VR use for destination marketing is much more effective that aforementioned photo galleries, etc. Do you happen to know of any studies that have found photo galleries to work better, as you said in initial comment? If you do, please refer them to me, it would be of great help :)
Kimo Boukamba Thank you so much for your comment too, absolutely brilliant insights!! The deadline for my work is 31 March too, so that would be hard to make in time, however, if you were willing to share useful parts of the paper with me, I would be very grateful, indeed properly referencing any knowledge I would find useful and suitable to refer to in my work :)
Jan Hamara I am unaware of any research showing that photo galleries work better than videos, 360° panoramics or VR – I only observe the reality of travel websites since mid-2000s. The story of 360TravelGuide•com is a good illustration of the evolution. By May 2007 they had a library of 1500 virtual tours of hotels worldwide. Famous travel brands like Thomson•co•uk, TUI•co•uk, CoopTravel•co•uk and HollandAmerica•com incorporated virtual tours produced by 360TravelGuide•com into their websites. See “success stories” from 2006 (https://www.eyefortravel.com/archive/360travelguidecom-are-delighted-announce-holland-america-world%E2%80%99s-premium-cruise-line-has-boo) and 2007 (http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/24008/thomsoncouk-to-add-hotel-content-from-360travelguidecom-15-mar-2007 – interestingly, although they observed that visitors spent far longer on the site per visit, it was impossible to link the popularity of virtual tours with an increase in bookings). For example, Hotel Sunway Playa Golf Sitges created about 60 panoramics and they are still available on TripAdvisor (https://www.tripadvisor.ru/Hotel_Review-g187502-d451045-Reviews-Hotel_Sunway_Playa_Golf_Spa-Sitges_Catalonia.html#photos;aggregationId=&albumid=999&filter=7), but other websites eventually got rid of them (https://www.tui.com/pauschalreisen/suchen/angebote/Hotel-Sunway-Playa-Golf-Sitges/33916/hotelDescription). This is how 360TravelGuide•com website looks today: http://www.360travelguide.com. It seems its design was not updated since 2007 :-) This is why I am more than sceptical about VR in travel, including destination marketing in particular.
+ useful article mentioning VR in travel: https://www.phocuswire.com/Emerging-technologies-travel-good-bad-blockchain
Ivan Burmistrov thank your for your insights. :) Yet the instances of ''VR'' that you have described in comparation to photo galleries, actually do not qualify as VR in context of my research (or definitions of others, see Guttenberg 2010)... web-hosted 360 degree presentations are not something, I consider a VR experience, thus in my research I will be looking into Virtual Environments that can offer the ideal state of flow with technology withdraw and full embodiment, and that will be achieved by meeting some crucial criteria :) (e.g. head-tracked 360 degree view with no sense of the world outside the HMD + spatial 3D sound + haptic feedback + locomotion possibilities + smell + image quality requirements and so on, I could go on :) ). If you take such experience in consideration, it is significantly different area, uncomparable to image galleries :)