Virtual reality presence as a preamble of tourism experience: The role of mental imagery

By Vanja Bogicevic, Soobin Seo, Jay Kandampully, Stephanie Q. Liu, N. Rudd. Tourism Management, 2019

464 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract While the dominant research stream on tourism technologies has investigated the adoption of self-service, mobile, and web-based technologies, the potential of destination marketing through virtual technologies is yet to be fully investigated. Because of limited empirical knowledge about the application of virtual reality (VR) in tourism, this research investigates how VR can be used to deliver integrated tourist experiences prior to their stay at the hotel. Through a lab-coordinated experiment, the current study contrasts three hotel previews that differ in their level of interactivity (images vs. 360° tour vs. VR). The findings demonstrate that a VR preview induces higher elaboration of mental imagery about the experience and a stronger sense of presence compared to both the 360° preview and images preview, thereby translating into enhanced brand experience. Such findings suggest that VR is substantial in prompting tourists to “daydream” about lodging offers prior to experiencing them at the destination's premises.

Subfields: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0de943055e2137c9782144456bf38fe328385c13

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

1. Filipe Gama
2. Juho Hamari
3. Juan Chen
4. Nannan Xi
5. Marc Riar

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Graeme McLean
2. Mansour A. Alyahya
3. Juho Hamari
4. Nannan Xi

In Human-Computer Interaction

1. Graeme McLean
2. Mansour A. Alyahya
3. Filipe Gama
4. Juho Hamari
5. Juan Chen
6. Nannan Xi
7. Marc Riar

Citations in the corpus

• Examining Tourism Consumers’ Attitudes and the Role of Sensory Information in Virtual Reality Experiences of a Tourist Destination (2021, background): “The sense of presence in technology has been outlined as a critical factor in influencing attitudes and behaviors in a virtual environment (Bogicevic et al. 2019; Faiola et al. 2013).”
• The challenges of entering the metaverse: An experiment on the effect of extended reality on workload (2022, background): “…as supporting cognitive processing, mental elaboration and imagery, by providing visual cues that are lacking from the physical environment (e.g., Bogicevic et al., 2019; Fan et al., 2020; Heller et al., 2019; Park & Yoo, 2020), as well as by offering simulating environments and situations that…”