knowledge in tourism industry

The future of tourism: Bridging the labor gap, enhancing customer experience

As travel resumes and builds momentum, it’s becoming clear that tourism is resilient—there is an enduring desire to travel. Against all odds, international tourism rebounded in 2022: visitor numbers to Europe and the Middle East climbed to around 80 percent of 2019 levels, and the Americas recovered about 65 percent of prepandemic visitors 1 “Tourism set to return to pre-pandemic levels in some regions in 2023,” United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), January 17, 2023. —a number made more significant because it was reached without travelers from China, which had the world’s largest outbound travel market before the pandemic. 2 “ Outlook for China tourism 2023: Light at the end of the tunnel ,” McKinsey, May 9, 2023.

Recovery and growth are likely to continue. According to estimates from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) for 2023, international tourist arrivals could reach 80 to 95 percent of prepandemic levels depending on the extent of the economic slowdown, travel recovery in Asia–Pacific, and geopolitical tensions, among other factors. 3 “Tourism set to return to pre-pandemic levels in some regions in 2023,” United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), January 17, 2023. Similarly, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) forecasts that by the end of 2023, nearly half of the 185 countries in which the organization conducts research will have either recovered to prepandemic levels or be within 95 percent of full recovery. 4 “Global travel and tourism catapults into 2023 says WTTC,” World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), April 26, 2023.

Longer-term forecasts also point to optimism for the decade ahead. Travel and tourism GDP is predicted to grow, on average, at 5.8 percent a year between 2022 and 2032, outpacing the growth of the overall economy at an expected 2.7 percent a year. 5 Travel & Tourism economic impact 2022 , WTTC, August 2022.

So, is it all systems go for travel and tourism? Not really. The industry continues to face a prolonged and widespread labor shortage. After losing 62 million travel and tourism jobs in 2020, labor supply and demand remain out of balance. 6 “WTTC research reveals Travel & Tourism’s slow recovery is hitting jobs and growth worldwide,” World Travel & Tourism Council, October 6, 2021. Today, in the European Union, 11 percent of tourism jobs are likely to go unfilled; in the United States, that figure is 7 percent. 7 Travel & Tourism economic impact 2022 : Staff shortages, WTTC, August 2022.

There has been an exodus of tourism staff, particularly from customer-facing roles, to other sectors, and there is no sign that the industry will be able to bring all these people back. 8 Travel & Tourism economic impact 2022 : Staff shortages, WTTC, August 2022. Hotels, restaurants, cruises, airports, and airlines face staff shortages that can translate into operational, reputational, and financial difficulties. If unaddressed, these shortages may constrain the industry’s growth trajectory.

The current labor shortage may have its roots in factors related to the nature of work in the industry. Chronic workplace challenges, coupled with the effects of COVID-19, have culminated in an industry struggling to rebuild its workforce. Generally, tourism-related jobs are largely informal, partly due to high seasonality and weak regulation. And conditions such as excessively long working hours, low wages, a high turnover rate, and a lack of social protection tend to be most pronounced in an informal economy. Additionally, shift work, night work, and temporary or part-time employment are common in tourism.

The industry may need to revisit some fundamentals to build a far more sustainable future: either make the industry more attractive to talent (and put conditions in place to retain staff for longer periods) or improve products, services, and processes so that they complement existing staffing needs or solve existing pain points.

One solution could be to build a workforce with the mix of digital and interpersonal skills needed to keep up with travelers’ fast-changing requirements. The industry could make the most of available technology to provide customers with a digitally enhanced experience, resolve staff shortages, and improve working conditions.

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Complementing concierges with chatbots.

The pace of technological change has redefined customer expectations. Technology-driven services are often at customers’ fingertips, with no queues or waiting times. By contrast, the airport and airline disruption widely reported in the press over the summer of 2022 points to customers not receiving this same level of digital innovation when traveling.

Imagine the following travel experience: it’s 2035 and you start your long-awaited honeymoon to a tropical island. A virtual tour operator and a destination travel specialist booked your trip for you; you connected via videoconference to make your plans. Your itinerary was chosen with the support of generative AI , which analyzed your preferences, recommended personalized travel packages, and made real-time adjustments based on your feedback.

Before leaving home, you check in online and QR code your luggage. You travel to the airport by self-driving cab. After dropping off your luggage at the self-service counter, you pass through security and the biometric check. You access the premier lounge with the QR code on the airline’s loyalty card and help yourself to a glass of wine and a sandwich. After your flight, a prebooked, self-driving cab takes you to the resort. No need to check in—that was completed online ahead of time (including picking your room and making sure that the hotel’s virtual concierge arranged for red roses and a bottle of champagne to be delivered).

While your luggage is brought to the room by a baggage robot, your personal digital concierge presents the honeymoon itinerary with all the requested bookings. For the romantic dinner on the first night, you order your food via the restaurant app on the table and settle the bill likewise. So far, you’ve had very little human interaction. But at dinner, the sommelier chats with you in person about the wine. The next day, your sightseeing is made easier by the hotel app and digital guide—and you don’t get lost! With the aid of holographic technology, the virtual tour guide brings historical figures to life and takes your sightseeing experience to a whole new level. Then, as arranged, a local citizen meets you and takes you to their home to enjoy a local family dinner. The trip is seamless, there are no holdups or snags.

This scenario features less human interaction than a traditional trip—but it flows smoothly due to the underlying technology. The human interactions that do take place are authentic, meaningful, and add a special touch to the experience. This may be a far-fetched example, but the essence of the scenario is clear: use technology to ease typical travel pain points such as queues, misunderstandings, or misinformation, and elevate the quality of human interaction.

Travel with less human interaction may be considered a disruptive idea, as many travelers rely on and enjoy the human connection, the “service with a smile.” This will always be the case, but perhaps the time is right to think about bringing a digital experience into the mix. The industry may not need to depend exclusively on human beings to serve its customers. Perhaps the future of travel is physical, but digitally enhanced (and with a smile!).

Digital solutions are on the rise and can help bridge the labor gap

Digital innovation is improving customer experience across multiple industries. Car-sharing apps have overcome service-counter waiting times and endless paperwork that travelers traditionally had to cope with when renting a car. The same applies to time-consuming hotel check-in, check-out, and payment processes that can annoy weary customers. These pain points can be removed. For instance, in China, the Huazhu Hotels Group installed self-check-in kiosks that enable guests to check in or out in under 30 seconds. 9 “Huazhu Group targets lifestyle market opportunities,” ChinaTravelNews, May 27, 2021.

Technology meets hospitality

In 2019, Alibaba opened its FlyZoo Hotel in Huangzhou, described as a “290-room ultra-modern boutique, where technology meets hospitality.” 1 “Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has a hotel run almost entirely by robots that can serve food and fetch toiletries—take a look inside,” Business Insider, October 21, 2019; “FlyZoo Hotel: The hotel of the future or just more technology hype?,” Hotel Technology News, March 2019. The hotel was the first of its kind that instead of relying on traditional check-in and key card processes, allowed guests to manage reservations and make payments entirely from a mobile app, to check-in using self-service kiosks, and enter their rooms using facial-recognition technology.

The hotel is run almost entirely by robots that serve food and fetch toiletries and other sundries as needed. Each guest room has a voice-activated smart assistant to help guests with a variety of tasks, from adjusting the temperature, lights, curtains, and the TV to playing music and answering simple questions about the hotel and surroundings.

The hotel was developed by the company’s online travel platform, Fliggy, in tandem with Alibaba’s AI Labs and Alibaba Cloud technology with the goal of “leveraging cutting-edge tech to help transform the hospitality industry, one that keeps the sector current with the digital era we’re living in,” according to the company.

Adoption of some digitally enhanced services was accelerated during the pandemic in the quest for safer, contactless solutions. During the Winter Olympics in Beijing, a restaurant designed to keep physical contact to a minimum used a track system on the ceiling to deliver meals directly from the kitchen to the table. 10 “This Beijing Winter Games restaurant uses ceiling-based tracks,” Trendhunter, January 26, 2022. Customers around the world have become familiar with restaurants using apps to display menus, take orders, and accept payment, as well as hotels using robots to deliver luggage and room service (see sidebar “Technology meets hospitality”). Similarly, theme parks, cinemas, stadiums, and concert halls are deploying digital solutions such as facial recognition to optimize entrance control. Shanghai Disneyland, for example, offers annual pass holders the option to choose facial recognition to facilitate park entry. 11 “Facial recognition park entry,” Shanghai Disney Resort website.

Automation and digitization can also free up staff from attending to repetitive functions that could be handled more efficiently via an app and instead reserve the human touch for roles where staff can add the most value. For instance, technology can help customer-facing staff to provide a more personalized service. By accessing data analytics, frontline staff can have guests’ details and preferences at their fingertips. A trainee can become an experienced concierge in a short time, with the help of technology.

Apps and in-room tech: Unused market potential

According to Skift Research calculations, total revenue generated by guest apps and in-room technology in 2019 was approximately $293 million, including proprietary apps by hotel brands as well as third-party vendors. 1 “Hotel tech benchmark: Guest-facing technology 2022,” Skift Research, November 2022. The relatively low market penetration rate of this kind of tech points to around $2.4 billion in untapped revenue potential (exhibit).

Even though guest-facing technology is available—the kind that can facilitate contactless interactions and offer travelers convenience and personalized service—the industry is only beginning to explore its potential. A report by Skift Research shows that the hotel industry, in particular, has not tapped into tech’s potential. Only 11 percent of hotels and 25 percent of hotel rooms worldwide are supported by a hotel app or use in-room technology, and only 3 percent of hotels offer keyless entry. 12 “Hotel tech benchmark: Guest-facing technology 2022,” Skift Research, November 2022. Of the five types of technology examined (guest apps and in-room tech; virtual concierge; guest messaging and chatbots; digital check-in and kiosks; and keyless entry), all have relatively low market-penetration rates (see sidebar “Apps and in-room tech: Unused market potential”).

While apps, digitization, and new technology may be the answer to offering better customer experience, there is also the possibility that tourism may face competition from technological advances, particularly virtual experiences. Museums, attractions, and historical sites can be made interactive and, in some cases, more lifelike, through AR/VR technology that can enhance the physical travel experience by reconstructing historical places or events.

Up until now, tourism, arguably, was one of a few sectors that could not easily be replaced by tech. It was not possible to replicate the physical experience of traveling to another place. With the emerging metaverse , this might change. Travelers could potentially enjoy an event or experience from their sofa without any logistical snags, and without the commitment to traveling to another country for any length of time. For example, Google offers virtual tours of the Pyramids of Meroë in Sudan via an immersive online experience available in a range of languages. 13 Mariam Khaled Dabboussi, “Step into the Meroë pyramids with Google,” Google, May 17, 2022. And a crypto banking group, The BCB Group, has created a metaverse city that includes representations of some of the most visited destinations in the world, such as the Great Wall of China and the Statue of Liberty. According to BCB, the total cost of flights, transfers, and entry for all these landmarks would come to $7,600—while a virtual trip would cost just over $2. 14 “What impact can the Metaverse have on the travel industry?,” Middle East Economy, July 29, 2022.

The metaverse holds potential for business travel, too—the meeting, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) sector in particular. Participants could take part in activities in the same immersive space while connecting from anywhere, dramatically reducing travel, venue, catering, and other costs. 15 “ Tourism in the metaverse: Can travel go virtual? ,” McKinsey, May 4, 2023.

The allure and convenience of such digital experiences make offering seamless, customer-centric travel and tourism in the real world all the more pressing.

Three innovations to solve hotel staffing shortages

Is the future contactless.

Given the advances in technology, and the many digital innovations and applications that already exist, there is potential for businesses across the travel and tourism spectrum to cope with labor shortages while improving customer experience. Process automation and digitization can also add to process efficiency. Taken together, a combination of outsourcing, remote work, and digital solutions can help to retain existing staff and reduce dependency on roles that employers are struggling to fill (exhibit).

Depending on the customer service approach and direct contact need, we estimate that the travel and tourism industry would be able to cope with a structural labor shortage of around 10 to 15 percent in the long run by operating more flexibly and increasing digital and automated efficiency—while offering the remaining staff an improved total work package.

Outsourcing and remote work could also help resolve the labor shortage

While COVID-19 pushed organizations in a wide variety of sectors to embrace remote work, there are many hospitality roles that rely on direct physical services that cannot be performed remotely, such as laundry, cleaning, maintenance, and facility management. If faced with staff shortages, these roles could be outsourced to third-party professional service providers, and existing staff could be reskilled to take up new positions.

In McKinsey’s experience, the total service cost of this type of work in a typical hotel can make up 10 percent of total operating costs. Most often, these roles are not guest facing. A professional and digital-based solution might become an integrated part of a third-party service for hotels looking to outsource this type of work.

One of the lessons learned in the aftermath of COVID-19 is that many tourism employees moved to similar positions in other sectors because they were disillusioned by working conditions in the industry . Specialist multisector companies have been able to shuffle their staff away from tourism to other sectors that offer steady employment or more regular working hours compared with the long hours and seasonal nature of work in tourism.

The remaining travel and tourism staff may be looking for more flexibility or the option to work from home. This can be an effective solution for retaining employees. For example, a travel agent with specific destination expertise could work from home or be consulted on an needs basis.

In instances where remote work or outsourcing is not viable, there are other solutions that the hospitality industry can explore to improve operational effectiveness as well as employee satisfaction. A more agile staffing model  can better match available labor with peaks and troughs in daily, or even hourly, demand. This could involve combining similar roles or cross-training staff so that they can switch roles. Redesigned roles could potentially improve employee satisfaction by empowering staff to explore new career paths within the hotel’s operations. Combined roles build skills across disciplines—for example, supporting a housekeeper to train and become proficient in other maintenance areas, or a front-desk associate to build managerial skills.

Where management or ownership is shared across properties, roles could be staffed to cover a network of sites, rather than individual hotels. By applying a combination of these approaches, hotels could reduce the number of staff hours needed to keep operations running at the same standard. 16 “ Three innovations to solve hotel staffing shortages ,” McKinsey, April 3, 2023.

Taken together, operational adjustments combined with greater use of technology could provide the tourism industry with a way of overcoming staffing challenges and giving customers the seamless digitally enhanced experiences they expect in other aspects of daily life.

In an industry facing a labor shortage, there are opportunities for tech innovations that can help travel and tourism businesses do more with less, while ensuring that remaining staff are engaged and motivated to stay in the industry. For travelers, this could mean fewer friendly faces, but more meaningful experiences and interactions.

Urs Binggeli is a senior expert in McKinsey’s Zurich office, Zi Chen is a capabilities and insights specialist in the Shanghai office, Steffen Köpke is a capabilities and insights expert in the Düsseldorf office, and Jackey Yu is a partner in the Hong Kong office.

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Knowledge Transfer to and within Tourism: Volume 8

Academic, industry and government bridges, table of contents, part i introduction, introduction: tourism knowledge transfer, part ii academic led transfer, experience design: academic-industry research collaboration for tourism innovation.

This chapter discusses innovation within the tourism small business sector and provides a case study of academic-industry research collaboration and knowledge transfer. Governments of many countries are interested in improving innovation in the tourism industry. Academics have important skills useful for developing innovative new products. However, collaboration between academic and industry partners is complex and difficult to effectively operationalize. A thriving and innovative new experience for Chinese tourists to Australia’s Gold Coast provides evidence of the characteristics of collaboration needed for successful academic-industry innovation.

Knowledge Transfer: Can Research Centers Make a Difference?

A number of tourism researchers have suggested that despite the proliferation of research in the field, the exchange of knowledge from academic research to practical application in the industry is poor. The argument made is that academic research seldom influences the real world of practice, and that for knowledge transfer to assist destinations a paradigm shift is required. This chapter takes a look at the challenges of knowledge transfer in tourism and focuses on a unique research center in South Carolina, where private and public sectors have joined together in an effort to support applied and commercially relevant research in order to improve the competitiveness of the state as a destination.

“Best Green”: Synergy Between Academia and a Hotel Chain

In 2010, as a response to global mega trends, the Best Western International central office requested all of its offices worldwide to implement environmental programs. The Mexico, Central America, and Ecuador offices consulted with Universidad del Caribe about the best way to fulfill this request and as a result a collaborative project began. A few months later, a Best Environmental Practices Manual (according to the Best Western operational practices and international environmental standards) was developed, together with the Best Green (BG) award and the implementation and external evaluation process. The corporate office evaluated the award and selected it together with the eight recognized international ecolabels, including it as part of its operation. They also promoted and sold awarded hotels as green products. After more than three years of working with the program in the regopm, 49 hotels have obtained the award and 13 have revalidated this certification. Unfortunately, for many external reasons, the program was suspended in 2014. However, this experience offers many valuable lessons in the collaboration among sectors and helps close the gap between theory and praxis and to make more effective collaboration process to increase tourism competitiveness.

Knowledge Transfer between Educational Institutions and Destinations

This chapter investigates the outcome of the ongoing interactions between the Danish University College of Northern Denmark and stakeholder networks in the Italian destination Campi Flegrei. The findings of this study show that the benefits of the interactions among students, lecturers, and destination stakeholders are manifold and show that the challenge resides in strengthening the flux of knowledge sent back to destination stakeholders. Thus, the authors suggest an action- and stakeholder-oriented approach for future knowledge transfer from the educational institution to the destination stakeholders.

Tourism Microentrepreneurship Knowledge Cogeneration

Rural subaltern people are generally relegated to the role of passive tourees, allowed to informally glean bits of income not worthwhile to the formal tourism industry. However, under some circumstances, microentrepreneurs find ways to take advantage of opportunities afforded by tourism to improve their livelihoods and gain human agency. The People-First Tourism Lab employs a participatory action research methodology to investigate tourism microentrepreneurship and its effect on participating individuals and communities. In this chapter, the authors provide a background of the project implemented in the State of North Carolina, USA, explain the research methodology, and outline current and forthcoming efforts.

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Knowledge Transfer

This chapter examines the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem and the knowledge transfer process involved, in the tourist municipality of Lagos, Portugal. Participatory action research is used to identify issues, antagonistic forces, and the system of governance which emerged in the creation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The different roles of both public and private actors were identified. Despite a deficit of entrepreneurial culture and social capital, the main results show that participatory action research encouraged knowledge transfer among political actors, entrepreneurs, and academics, leading to the implementation of the basic conditions for an entrepreneurial ecosystem dynamic.

Tourism Knowledge Transfer in Brazil: The Gap between Academy and Industry

Brazilian higher education in the field of tourism took off in the 1970s, reaching its course and student peaks in the first years of this century. Recent research shows, however, that many graduates are still occupying hotel reception positions, in most cases with an operational status. The Brazilian government will occasionally hire researchers from companies and institutes not related to the tourism field. Even though the link between these two worlds is crucial, the commercial tourism industry in Brazil does not value academic insights, and the academy does not look beyond its epistemological and theoretical borders. This chapter will discuss the situation in Brazil and offer perspectives on measure needed to close the gap between theory and practice.

Part III Public-Private Partnerships for Knowledge Transfer

Collaborative strategy for tourism development and regeneration: italy’s coast of naples.

Cities by the sea have a strong identity which comes from the historic relationship between an urban community and the ocean and is important in attracting tourists. This chapter analyzes urban regeneration, waterfront redevelopment, touristic valorization, and marketing strategies used by seaside cities that, by sharing their maritime culture, have achieved integrated urban transformations. This is facilitated by developing a “collaborative commons” of producers and consumers for the touristic enhancement of the metropolitan area such as Naples.

Tourism Innovation-Oriented Public-Private Partnerships for Smart Destination Development

The chapter aims at advancing existing knowledge on innovation-oriented public-private partnerships for developing smart tourism services at destination level. Recent research has emphasized to the importance of collaborative arrangements involving public sector organizations and private companies for the development of new or improved ICT-enabled tourism services towards the smart transformation of destinations. However, knowledge on public-private partnerships specifically set up for realizing smart innovations is still scarce. This chapter develops a framework for understanding the nature and functioning of this type of partnerships at destination level by integrating literature on tourism partnerships, smart tourism, and innovation in services with a case study of a successful partnership in the Italian destination of Siracusa.

The Destination Triangle: Toward Relational Management

Destinations are highly dynamic and complex systems requiring a responsive and relational governance system. Recent tourism literature proposes a network approach to destination management, but empirical evidence shows interactions in destinations remains low. Dominant stakeholders tend to control destination governance systems; less powerful ones are not actively included. This chapter schematizes the network of relations as a destination triangle made up of governance, supply side, and tourists. A quantitative study of tourists and a qualitative study of supply-side stakeholders show that the destination triangle is inappropriately adjusted. The supply side is not actively involved in destination management. The findings show that the absence of a relational management approach can impede initiatives.

Strategic and Participative Planning in la Comarca de Los Alerces: The Process and Outcomes

Tourism planning is an important issue for destination management organizations to satisfy both local community and tourists. This chapter attempts to explain the process and outcomes of a strategic and participative tourism planning project through a case study in Patagonia, Argentina. The general framework of the study, principles of cooperation throughout the project, the geographical information, stages of planning and implementation strategies will be discussed.

Intelligent Governance for Rural Destinations: Lessons from Europe

One of the main challenges of “good tourism intelligence governance” is to balance and manage the interests of private enterprises, public administrations, and civil society, and to find the right mix between strategic and operational governance. An innovative governance model was introduced in 2011 in emerging rural destinations within the three years’ European project “Listen to the Voice of Villages.” By means of in-depth interviews carried out in summer 2014 in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia, this chapter investigates how this model of governance was deployed and performed. Findings suggest that this model is effective and sustainable, promotes and supports knowledge transfer and as such it can be recommended for implementation in other emerging rural destinations.

Part IV New Approaches

Measuring the quality of destinations: a portuguese case study.

Research on the quality of destinations has been developed from the tourists’ perspective, and a more holistic view is necessary for integrated destination planning. This implies cooperation among multiple stakeholders and the sustainable use of resources. The purpose of this study is to establish a conceptual model to measure the quality of destinations, considering the concepts of governance, sustainability, and tourist experience. According to the index, that used data from Algarve region, the performance of a destination depends on these three main dimensions, each one measured by a set of subdimensions that were weighted by an international expert panel. The result provides guidelines for transfer of knowledge to the main destination stakeholders.

Social Media and Knowledge Transfer in Tourism: Five-Star Hotels in Philadelphia

An essential part of the transfer of knowledge in the tourism and hospitality industry, destination image is defined as the expression of objective knowledge, imagination, and the subjective emotions of the tourist. Social media is profoundly changing the way the tourist images and interacts with the destination environment. In turn, firms in the industry are seeking to leverage the power of social media to gain insights into tourist cognition and behavior. In this chapter, we analyze various social media to investigate knowledge transfer relating to two groups of hotels in Philadelphia, and we propose a methodology to predict future lodging demand from empirical data in line with the objectives of the t-Forum.

Art, Architecture and Archaeology: Pompeii and Oplontis

Conserving, creating, and communicating effectively the complex image of a particular touristic area represents an important challenge that global market imposes on planners. Art and architecture can contribute to this challenge as they provide significant interactions and transactions among different sectors. Planning able to valorize patrimony and to read and to interpret cultural heritage is needed. New ways of collaboration need to be established among different fields of science, in order to develop, communicate, and experiment with a new language aimed at people from different backgrounds. The main theme in the “Archaeology and Synesthesy” project is to devise new method for the bringing to life of cultural heritage through participants’ senses.

Knowledge Transfer Through Journals

In order to facilitate transfer of knowledge to and within tourism, it is necessary to understand research trends and to critically analyze their contributions to knowledge formation. This chapter examine articles published in Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Tourism Management , and Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing , between 2000 and 2010, using STATIS to explore the main changes and trends that occurred in terms of research themes. Study findings indicate similarities and differences between the four journals under analysis, providing clues for a better understanding of the objectives, limitations, and trends in tourism research as well as the positioning of each academic journal.

Tourism Distribution Channels: Knowledge Requirements

This chapter presents a summary of the presentations and the discussions concerning electronic distribution channels in tourism and hospitality held at the 2015 t-Forum. Both academics and practitioners examined the present situation and elaborated on the problems and possible ways to overcome them. The main topics that emerged were distribution channels and their best use and optimization, interoperability between the many different technological systems, the need for a standardized representation of data and transactions, and the role of the Internet and Web as source of information useful for market analysis and product planning. Finally, the importance and the necessity of a more intense collaboration among all the stakeholders and between academic researchers and the industry was emphasized.

Part V Conclusion

Bridging theory and practice: lessons and directions, about the authors.

• Marcella De Martino
• Mathilda Van Niekerk

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• Knowledge Management

Role of Knowledge Management System in Hospitality and Tourism Industry

Knowledge Management (KM) has established itself as a key part of many organizations, the process of creating value from an organization’s intangible assets. It deals with how best to leverage knowledge internally in the organization and externally to the customers and stakeholders. The growth of world markets, availability of technology and management know-how, the political and economic integration worldwide has led to increased globalization of hotel industry, hence the need to manage knowledge. Globalization of business has made it critically vital for organizations to adopt knowledge management as a strategy to build sustainability and improve customer services in the hotel industry.

The hospitality system mainly consists of the following areas, which cooperate/network but also compete with each other:

• Tour Operator
• Incoming System
• Regional and National Tourism Organisations

The tourism industry is a knowledge-based industry. Like in every organisation, the hospitality industry has a clear information overflow, hard for clients to pick the right holiday package available from numerous travel agents at similar prices. Lots of products and services, information and market partners are available. A big advantage for tourists is the freedom of choice and for tourism providers a variety of partners being available. But both tourists and travel partners have the task of evaluation to fulfil i.e. who has the best and nicest product, who really offers what comes close to the customers’ wishes and needs?

The nature of tourism products and services are human beings providing the guest a “moment of truth”, special experiences and a warm and charming feeling they should not forget quickly after their holiday. The knowledge intensity in tourism processes is the increasing importance of trust in relations between the acting elements. According to Bouncken/Pyo, there are three forms of trust:

• Personal Trust (the trusted is an individual)
• Institutional Trust (the trusted is an institution)
• Ontological trust (the reliance on one’s own cognitive maps, built up by experience)

In the tourism industry, the knowledge intensive services and relations need trust building over time. Trust as being part of the implicit knowledge of persons and organisations is a core competence in this industry. Sources of trust can be, for example, the reputations of travel agencies, suppliers and the personal recommendation by trusted friends, colleagues, and partners.

Categories of Knowledge in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

Different categories of knowledge can be found when looking at the various jobs and employees working in the tourism field:

Task Specific knowledge

Task specific knowledge contains the specific procedures, sequences, actions and strategies to fulfil a task. Both explicit and tacit knowledge is used to fulfil companies’ goals. Examples are front and back office operations which are codified in manuals but also need to be learned by training. The way call center employees talk to guests, give them information; manuals help with used phrases but on-the-job training is necessary to internalise the knowledge. Therefore, to store all the agent training related materials and documents, deployment of a centralised repository such as PHPKB  is mandatory in an hospitality organization. 

Task Related Knowledge

Task-related knowledge contains individuals’ shared knowledge not of a single task, but of related tasks, e.g. the form of teamwork in the firm. Not a single task but the network thinking of different tasks and how they are combined and intertwined help a team/group of employees to internalize similar working values. Examples of task-related knowledge are shared quality standards, standardized products, and services used in different offices of one company e.g. layout of bills, guest requests, offers to clients, and corporate culture components.

Transactive Memory

Transactive memory includes decentralized knowledge of the other organizational members’ cognitive models. The main understanding of this form of knowledge category is the realization of each other’s knowledge, preferences, weaknesses, and work values. Examples are yellow pages (finding the right expert for a certain knowledge needed).

Guest Related Knowledge

Tourism products and services are formed around their customers; therefore, the knowledge about guests is the core of the business. Examples are socio-demographics, preferences, expectations, culture, etc. Knowledge about guests should not only be based on demographic information such as age, income, education, status or type of occupation, region of the country, and household size but also on psychographics that includes people’s lifestyles and behaviors; where they like to go on holidays, the kinds of interests they have, the values they hold and how they behave. A deeper understanding of the traits of guests will help to provide the right package that better suits their needs.

Customer/Supplier Related Knowledge

This knowledge is basically treated the same way as the guest-related knowledge; the difference here is to look from a business perspective towards the customers and suppliers (e.g. regional tourist offices, hotel chains, tourism consulting companies, event management companies, catering companies, etc.)

Market-Related Knowledge

Market-related know-how such as size, population, culture, and habits are important for every organization. The operating markets might vary enormously to the key market and the offered products and services will have to change and need to be adapted accordingly.

Network Related Knowledge

The organization should understand what kind of network it is operating, and who are the competitors. This externally linked knowledge is sometimes underestimated but is very important for the long-term success of an organization. Especially in the tourism and leisure industry, relationships with other players are extremely important. These knowledge elements help a national tourism organization to better market and offer different products and services to their customers and position itself on the market.

The management of customer relationships and experiences is also part of the knowledge management concept. Customer relationship management and customer experience management are a crucial part of every company’s way of doing business (consciously or unconsciously performed). The root of these management techniques is the single customer being the key to performance success or failure. Knowledge management has the following main purposes and is implemented as:

• Networking of experts
• Document management
• Create new products and services
• Enhancement of customer and employee satisfaction
• Enhancement of innovation and competitiveness
• Enhancement of processes
• Development of competences
• Development of a knowledge friendly company culture
• Enhancement of communication channels within the organization

Hospitality Knowledge Management and Customer Experience

The travel and hospitality industry is extremely competitive, and margins are thin. Still, travelers demand great customer experiences. Delivering personalized customer service increasingly relies upon knowledge management for travel and hospitality companies. Your customers’ problems are resolved quickly across each interaction, which is critical for market growth.

With ever-increasing competition in the travel and tourism industry, it has become crucial for companies to utilize knowledge management and provide levels of customer service that surpass all previous standards in order to gain the upper hand when securing business from potential holidaymakers and travelers. Along with the increasing competition, the number of customers booking online has seen sharp growth over the last decade leading to the need to devise strategies in which these increasing demands can be managed.

People don’t want to book their long-awaited holidays through travel agents; customers have access to a broad range of companies and travel options at the click of a mouse online. As a result of this customer contact centers are becoming more and more stifled with vast volumes of customer queries, be it a pre-sale or post-sale inquiry requiring agents to possess unprecedented levels of travel knowledge. Therefore, additional tools must be implemented for agents to achieve their full productivity potential.

The solution for managing these continually rising demands is knowledge management software , enabling the customer to self-serve and empowering the agent with fast access to an extensive resource of accurate knowledge.

Knowledge Management Software as Self-service Tool

Customers expect easy resolutions to issues via the internet, and in particular over mobile devices. They want to choose their preferred method of communication, including solutions that circumvent the live agent. Knowledge Management software is an ideal solution to not only reduce the volume of support-related calls to contact centers but also as an answer to reduce call escalations by significantly improving first-call resolution rates. This allows your agents the time to address more complex customer queries and provide the levels of customer service paramount to your company’s reputation.

The above resolutions to modern-day travel and tourism challenges not only provide cost-saving measures to your hospitality company but also add an abundant value to improving customer satisfaction and experience, by greatly reducing the time taken to find accurate answers, as well as providing exceptional customer-friendly self-service channels. 

PHPKB knowledge management system helps you create innovative, distinctive customer interaction hubs with knowledge management for travel and hospitality with such options as collaboration through forums and emails, and web self-service through an effective knowledge base. One of the most important steps when implementing a new knowledge base software to build a perfect knowledge base is to create a well-designed plan and then launch it systematically.

Knowledge Management Software as Agent’s Support Assistant

A quick deploy knowledge management system reduces the wastage of time spent flicking through large numbers of company documents and PDF files. In place of this time-consuming process, customer service agents can effortlessly span an entire library of documents using a natural language search feature, providing results almost instantaneously. PHPKB knowledge management software can help you organize all customer-related knowledge and thus reduces the support cost.

Find out how PHPKB knowledge management software can help you to provide the best self-service experience to your users so they can easily find what they need. Get a privately hosted 30-day trial to take a deeper dive into PHPKB! 

The type and volume of customer queries can vary significantly depending upon the event or competitive offers. Knowledge management for travel and hospitality can support spikes in a volume created by events and special promotions. It will enable your company to receive alerts to potential interruptions in customer service, closely monitor trends, and disseminate responses across many channels.

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Managing Knowledge in Tourism Industry: A Nonaka's SECI Model

2022, IJMRAP

With the uncertainty in the environment, most sectors have experienced the significance of knowledge creation and sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism is one of the most affected sectors during the pandemic, searching for knowledge creation and sharing to cater to tourism business dynamics. Nonaka's SECI model has been used for creating and sharing knowledge since its introduced in 1995. The Japanese concept of the shared commonplace, known as "ba", is crucial for this spiral process of SECI. The "ba" could play a significant role in Socialization and Externalization in the SECI model. This study aims to explore the adoption of the SECI model for knowledge creation and sharing, in the recent past study, exclusively in tourism-related studies. Therefore, fifty empirical studies in the last ten years were used for this study. SECI model has contributed to transferring intangible knowledge into valuable knowledge assets in the tourism industry in various countries by promoting and sustaining it in the tourism business. The study found that previous studies have hardly discussed the importance of the "ba" concept.

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The perceived value of local knowledge tourism: dimension identification and scale development

Hailin zhang.

1 Department of Tourism Management, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

2 ASEAN Tourism Research Base, Guilin Tourism University, Guilin, China

Jinbo Jiang

Jinsheng (jason) zhu, associated data.

The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Introduction

Local knowledge tourism encompasses the rich cultural heritage, historical narratives, and traditional practices of a specific destination. Despite its significance in enhancing the tourist experience, there is a dearth of research examining the subjective perceptions and values of visitors engaging in local knowledge tourism. Consequently, there is a pressing need to explore the composition of perceived tourist values in this unique context.

Due to the exploratory nature of this research, a constructivist grounded theory and content analysis are applied to analyze the data.

This study identifies and conceptualizes five distinct dimensions of perceived values in local knowledge tourism: functional value, emotional value, social value, cognitive value, and self-actualization value. Furthermore, an 18-item scale is developed to measure these dimensions quantitatively.

This research makes several significant contributions: (1) it expands the scope of perceived value research within the tourism domain and enhances our understanding of the tourist experience in local knowledge tourism; (2) it provides a reliable instrument for future quantitative investigations into the behavior and mindset of local knowledge tourists; and (3) it offers theoretical foundations and practical insights for destination managers seeking to develop tourism products tailored to the preferences and expectations of local knowledge tourists.

Local knowledge refers to the traditional knowledge, values, skills, beliefs, and philosophy that communities have developed through long-term interactions with their natural and cultural environments ( Lenzerini, 2011 ). This diverse and valuable knowledge has profound social, cultural, ecological, scientific, and economic significance, reflecting the rich diversity of human civilization ( Hill et al., 2020 ). Local knowledge is increasingly recognized as a significant tourist attraction and plays a crucial role in product development within the tourism industry ( Gato et al., 2022 ). To address sustainability and social justice in the tourist industry, it is essential to recognize the diversity of cultures and the inherent multifaceted modalities of knowledge. However, there is a need to further explore and understand the structure, characteristics, and assessment of perceived value in the context of local knowledge tourism to promote sustainability and social justice in the tourism sector ( Ramos, 2015 ). Local knowledge tourism is developed focusing on the elements of knowledge in heritage tourism and to facilitate dialogue and exchange between diverse cultures ( Moayerian et al., 2022 ). As such, it is a constructive response to the need of strengthening tourist experience in the era of cultural and tourism integration ( Yuan et al., 2022 ). Unlike heritage tourism which merely promotes superficial historical landscape viewing and experience, local knowledge tourism stresses in-depth visitor participation and knowledge development. Existing research has not given sufficient attention to visitors’ subjective impression and experience of an attraction’s worth in local knowledge tourism, and the structure, features, and assessment of perceived value must be elucidated.

The definition of perceived tourist value is derived from the marketing concept of customer values and was reintroduced into tourism studies in the 1990s ( Overstreet, 1993 ). Since the dawn of the 21st century, the concept has been extended to tourist consumer behavior and destination marketing research. It has also emerged as a new prominent research topic, following in the footsteps of quality management and visitor satisfaction ( Li et al., 2009 ; Zhu et al., 2021 ). This notion offers a perfect vantage point from which to comprehend the tourists’ all-encompassing assessments of their travel experiences within the framework of the consumption-based model of local knowledge tourism. The investigation of tourist perceived values will contribute to a deeper comprehension of tourist behavioral characteristics, consumption behavior, and consumption psychology, thereby furnishing a theoretical foundation for the development of products and a marketing strategy for local knowledge tourism.

And thus, the current research aims to address this gap and highlight the significance of local knowledge in enhancing the tourist experience. The current research intended to address the questions as follows, (1) What are the key components and dimensions of perceived value in local knowledge tourism? (2) How does the perceived value of local knowledge tourism contribute to sustainable tourism development and social justice? (3) What fundamental dimensions and scales can be implemented to enhance and promote the perceived value of local knowledge tourism? This exploratory research, conducted in the context of Guilin, China, employs a grounded theory approach to identify the multidimensional structure of perceived value in local knowledge tourism and develop a rigorous scale. By applying a stringent scientific procedure, this study aims to provide theoretical support and practical guidance for the development of local knowledge tourism, addressing a gap in the existing literature.

The paper is structured as follows: the introduction provides an overview of the significance of local knowledge tourism and the importance of perceived value. The literature review delves into the concepts of local knowledge, perceived value, and their relevance to the tourism industry. The methodology section describes the case study approach and the grounded theory utilized to identify the structure of perceived value in local knowledge tourism. The findings and analysis section present the results of the study, including the multidimensional structure and components of perceived value. The discussion section interprets the findings, highlighting their theoretical and practical implications. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the key insights and suggests future research directions in local knowledge tourism and perceived value.

Literature review

The theory of local knowledge.

Geertz (1974 , p. 19), an American anthropologist, is attributed with introducing the idea of “local knowledge” as a central notion in interpretative anthropology; nevertheless, he did not provide a precise term for the concept. Local knowledge has been characterized in a variety of ways, depending on the setting and the goals of various researchers and organizations. For instance, the United Nations’ Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems Program (LINKS), which aims to support the preservation and transmission of collective memory and cultural heritage, defines that understandings, capacities, and philosophies formed by communities with extensive histories of engagement with their natural environs are referred to as local knowledge ( UNESCO, 2017 ). Local knowledge plays an essential role in a cultural network that also includes linguistic systems, categorization schemes, techniques for making use of resources, social interactions, and rituals and spiritual activities. Local knowledge, on the other hand, is a form of peripheral and unofficial knowledge held by indigenous people. This stands in contrast to the universal scientific knowledge centered on the West. Broadly speaking, it is the sum of material and cultural achievements accumulated by people in a certain region during their historical development, involving every aspect of life that may include local economic development, science and technology, social values (SVs), religious beliefs, culture and arts, social customs, lifestyles, and social codes of conduct ( Correia et al., 2013 ; Lepore et al., 2021 ). It is not always related to specific daily life, but also contains abstract thoughts, philosophies, and insights, which are comprehensive knowledge and technology about ecology, geography, or society that revitalize the locale ( Gao and Wu, 2017 ; Zhu and Siriphon, 2019 ).

The theory of local knowledge tourism

Local knowledge can highlight the diversity and equality of different cultures (see Table 1 below). The mysterious local knowledge is inherently attractive to the general public, by which such knowledge is related to the cultural economy ( Zhang and Liu, 2012 ), festivals creation ( Chaiboonsr et al., 2022 ), coproduction of histories ( Glover, 2008 ), as well as ethnic tourism development issues ( Chatzopoulou et al., 2019 ). Integrating local knowledge into the design of participatory tourism can highly promote the quality of tourism development, participation of local community in tourism planning and operation, as well as heritage preservation ( Pongponrat, 2011 ; Pongponrat and Chantradoan, 2012 ; de Bruin and Jelinčić, 2016 ). Deep experience of local knowledge in a destination, for instance, local engagements ( Sofield et al., 2017 ; Rahmanita, 2018 ) and indigenous tourism experiences ( Butler, 2017 ) will contribute to the tourist experience and lead to in-depth tourism. A consensus has been reached that enhancing cultural integration and tourist experience in destination management has become a significant trend for tourism planning and products development ( Beritelli et al., 2007 ; Halkier, 2014 ; Pechlaner et al., 2015 ). Based on the above discussion, this study defined local knowledge tourism as a type of heritage tourism that utilize local knowledge of a destination as its essence of tourism attraction, aiming to conserve the traditional cultural heritage and provide an in-depth and participatory cultural tourism experience and knowledge acquisition opportunity to tourists. From the perspective of the tourist, one of the main goals or motivations is to gain local indigenous knowledge of the destination. Since local knowledge encompasses the knowledge and practices contextualized in the local daily life experiences, such tourist activities can offer a deeper cultural experience compared to other types of heritage tourism.

Scale examples of tourist perceived value.

Data source: this study.

The theory of tourist perceived value

Customer perceived value was first discussed in the field of marketing and refers to how customers feel about a product or service with regard to perceived quality, internal and external features of the product, and other psychological benefits ( Zeithaml, 1988 ). It has been defined as a customer’s assessment of the trade-offs between the benefits and sacrifices realized in selecting a given product from the options available in the market ( Sánchez-Fernández and Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007 ; Lim, 2013 ; Behnam et al., 2023 ). Perceived costs consist of monetary costs and non-monetary costs such as costs of time, physical efforts or life style changes that one has to pay to acquire the product or service ( Snoj et al., 2004 ). As a special form of customer perceived value, tourist perceived value is the emotional and psychological benefits generated by a series of interaction between tourists and the outside world. It is an important research dimension to grasp tourists’ perception and experience of tourist destinations ( Bao and Xie, 2019 ). It is defined as the trade-off between perceived gains and losses of tourists in a specific tourism context and it is an overall evaluation of tourist products or services ( Luo et al., 2020 ; Zhu et al., 2023 ). Perceived value is deemed to have great impact on tourist preference, satisfaction, and loyalty, for example, high level of perceived value will lead to the repurchase of the products and service ( Chen and Chen, 2010 ). Therefore, measuring the perceived value of tourists may contribute to a better understanding of tourists’ consumption behavior and psychology, as well as provide theoretical basis for tourism marketing ( Biao et al., 2020 ). The circumstances, quality, and attributes of tourism products play a significant role in determining the tourist perceived value. Meanwhile, it is also influenced by subjective elements such as preference, attitude, physiological condition, demand, and motivation ( Woodruff, 1997 ; Zhang et al., 2018 ). Compared to consumption activities in other commercial sectors, tourist consumption is more complicated and diverse, and the perception of tourist worth has plural and structural dimensions. The perceived value of a tourist destination contains functional value (FV), hedonic value, and symbolic worth ( Xie and Li, 2009 ). Due to the intangible, diachronic, and interactive features of tourism products and services, tourists tend to perceive the value of tourism experiences from a holistic perspective considering multiple elements such as a product, service, and destination ( Huang and Huang, 2007 ).

Dimensions and measurement of tourist perceived value

Customers perceived value are mainly assessed in the unidimensional approach ( Sánchez-Fernández and Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007 ) and the multidimensional approach ( Loureiro et al., 2012 ). The unidimensional approach emphasizes economic utility apart from the trade-offs between the benefits such as customer utility and sacrifices such as price, time, effort, etc. ( Bunghez, 2016 ; Yin et al., 2017 ). A typical practice is to incorporate the tourist perceived value as an independent variable into the model of tourist satisfaction or loyalty ( Chenini and Touaiti, 2018 ). To overcome the limitations of the unidimensional approach that ignores various aspects of a person’s emotional state and external conditions, the multidimensional approach was proposed to explore the factors underlying the phenomenon ( Sheth et al., 1991 ; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001 ). Using the multidimensional approach, Sheth et al. (1991) identified five dimensions of customer perceived value that include social, emotional, functional epistemic, and conditional value. Sweeney and Soutar (2001) synthesize previous studies (e.g., Groth, 1995 ; Grönroos, 1997 ; de Ruyter et al., 1998 ) to develop the four-dimension PERVAL scale in which the emotional value (EV), for example, represents the utility derived from the feelings or affective states that a product generates; and SV refers to the utility derived from the product’s ability to enhance social relationship.

To assess the tourist perceived values, scales have been modified and developed in different tourism contexts, such as the five-dimensional SERV-PERVAL scale that encompasses quality, monetary price, non-monetary price, reputation, and emotional response for cruise tourism ( Petrick, 2004 ). Andrades and Dimanche (2018) analyze tourist value perception from the perspective of psychology and developed a scale of co-creating tourists’ experiential value at tourist attractions. Furthermore, related scales may involve the overall perception of a tourist destination, ecotourism, traditional event tourism, and cruise tourism. These studies might expand our understanding of consumer value in tourism and serve as a reference for the current inquiry, which will provide a reliable tool for quantitative study in the context of local knowledge tourism.

Grounded theory analysis and value dimensions identification

Research methods.

Due to the exploratory nature of this research, constructivist grounded theory and content analysis are applied to analyze the data collected. Grounded theory is useful to develop theory based on the analysis of systematically collected data and through interaction with study participants ( Mills et al., 2006 ). To realize the ultimate goal of theoretical construction with high reliability and validity, further to the primary data from the semi-structured interviews, secondary data are extracted from sources like online travelogue and news report to form a triangle cross validation. In the text encoding and follow-up study, review and advice are also sought from a group of experts for item purification. In the verification part, SPSS26.0 and AMOS24.0 were used for confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity analysis, and competitive factor analysis.

Guilin city, China, is chosen as the study case because it is a world-famous tourist destination and a recognized national historical and cultural city, as designated by the Chinese central government. In addition, Guilin is home to a dozen ethnic minorities, including Zhuang, Dong, Miao, and Yao. With extensive natural, cultural, and tourist resources, Guilin tourism contains rich local knowledge in a variety of forms, from traditional agricultural lifestyle to genuine ethnic culture ( Zhu and Siriphon, 2019 ), making it an appropriate case study for this investigation.

Data collection

The first step is to solicit the views of the respondents regarding four aspects of their local knowledge tourism experience: tourism motivation, experience process, experience value perception, personal feelings, and gain. From March to May 2022, semi-structure interviews were conducted in five local knowledge tourism experience zones in Guilin: the East West Alley, Longsheng Terrace Field, Guangxi Ethnic Tourism Museum, West Street of Yangshuo, and venue of the Liusanjie Impression Show. Each interview lasted about 20–30 min, and the whole process was voice recorded with the permission of the interview participants. According to the selection criteria, the participants needed to have conducted a local knowledge tourism in Guilin as defined by this study. A total of 22 participants were recruited through snowball sampling and their demographic profile is shown in Table 2 .

Profile of the respondents ( N = 22).

Coding and identifying the value dimensions

Using a method known as thematic analysis, the data were then evaluated and examined. Using the professional qualitative research software NVivo 11.0 for data coding, the thematic analysis has identified 19 concepts and 5 dimension of the tourism perceived values of local knowledge, including the FV, EV, SV, cognitive value (CV), and self-actualization value (SAV) as shown in Tables 3 , ​ ,4 4 .

Example of open coding of local knowledge tourism perceived value.

1 The stilt house is a traditional residence house for ethnic minority such as Zhuang, Yao, and Miao in southwest of China.

Results of axial coding and selective coding.

Scale development

Item design.

The initial scale items of this study were developed from multiple sources such as researchers, experts, and literature. Compared to the mere use of the inductive and deductive methods, the mixed method with multiple item sources will have a higher level of validity ( Zhu et al., 2022 ; Lyu et al., 2023 ). Based on the 19 subcategories defined by the grounded theory analysis and some well-accepted tourism perceived value scales, a total of 25 initial scale items were developed. Following Delphi method, experts from Guilin Culture and Tourism Bureau, Guangxi Ethnic Tourism Museum, and Guilin Tourism University were invited to review and purify the initials items on the principle of conciseness, completeness, and correctness. As a result, 6 items were deleted, and remaining items refined in wording. The number of items is consistent with those of the formal questionnaire.

The pilot survey to develop the scale

Investigation process and sample analysis.

The pilot survey questionnaire is divided into three parts. The first part of the questionnaire includes a brief description of the questionnaire and the concept of local knowledge tourism with examples and photos. The second part is the five-dimension measurement adopting the 5-level Likert scale with “1” meaning “strongly disagree” and “5” meaning “strongly agree.” The third part addresses the personal information of the correspondent. According to Klein et al. (1994) , the sample size should be 10–20 times the number of measured items. The pilot study was carried out online between April and May 2022 to reduce the hazards associated with person-to-person interaction in COVID-19. A key recruitment requirement for respondents is that they must have a local knowledge tourism experience as defined by this study in Guilin within the last 12 months. To ensure the reliability and validity, questionnaires that took less than 120 s to complete and all choice are the same are deemed to be invalid. As such, 183, or 87.6% of the valid questionnaires were finally collected out of the total 209 distributed.

As shown in Table 5 , 56.8% of the respondents are female. A total of 82.5% are 21–60 years old, while those below 20 and above 61 accounted for 5.5 and 2.2%, respectively. As for occupations, civil servants represent 22.4%, followed by staff members in cultural, education, science and technology sectors (18.0%), enterprise employees (13.1%), and students (17.5%). Regarding education background, 50.8% are college/undergraduate students. To sum up, the demographic characteristics of the pilot survey respondents are basically in line with the real situation of local knowledge tourists.

Profile of the pilot survey respondents ( N = 183).

Descriptive statistical analysis

As illustrated in Table 6 , the mean values of FV, EV, SV, CV, and SAV were 4.30, 4.04, 4.15, 4.19, and 3.16, respectively. Although the score of SAV was relatively low as compared to other value dimensions, which can be explained by the classic theory of Maslow’s needs hierarchy. Self-actualization lies at the top of the hierarchy of needs; hence, it is the most complex and difficult to attain. Secondly, the kurtosis and skewness of data are used for testing whether samples are normally distributed, which indicates the universality of samples. The data skewness coefficient of each measurement element ranges between −1.903 and 0.156 with the absolute value smaller than 2, and the kurtosis coefficient is between −0.643 and 5.443 with the absolute value less than 8, which meet the criteria of normal distribution.

Descriptive statistical analysis of pilot survey ( N = 183).

Reliability test

The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by the internal consistency coefficient and the overall correlation coefficient of the item (CITC). The Cronbach’s α coefficient and CITC value of each variable were obtained by using SPSS24.0 for the items of five latent variables: FV, EV, SV, CV, and SAV. The results showed that Cronbach’s α coefficient of the total scale was 0.914, and of the five subscales were 0.767, 0.784, 0.826, 0.871, and 0.927 respectively, which are all acceptable. The CITC value of each item in the study also reaches the standard of 0.5. However, the Cronbach’s α coefficient was significantly increased after the fourth item of CV, i.e., “ I can better reflect on and recognize my own culture through local knowledge tourism experience ,” was deleted. To ensure the internal consistency of the questionnaire, it is therefore decided to delete the item. The author argues that the reason why the deleted fourth item of the CV dimension failed to meet the standard is because the respondents in the interview were all Chinese, they may not be able to distinguish between their own culture and that of the others in the case of Guilin.

Exploratory factor analysis

To investigate the underlying dimensions of the items, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed with a component analysis and the varimax rotation method. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test (KMO = 0.866) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ 2 = 5,860.12, df = 528; p < 0.001) indicated suitability to conduct the factor analysis. It was found that the remaining 18 items could be extracted into five dimensions, and the cumulative explained variance has reached 73.374%. The distribution of loading values for each factor after rotation was reported in Table 7 below.

Exploratory factor analysis of the pilot survey questionnaire ( N = 183).

Data source: this study. Highlights represent the items with loading value above 0.6, indicating good convergence validity, are combined to form a common factor.

After item CV4 has been deleted, the 18-item scale was finally formed. All factor loading is greater than 0.6 with most loading exceeding 0.7, which indicates that the samples have satisfactory convergence validity. The EFA results are basically consistent with the findings of the grounded theory coding, which preliminarily verifies that this newly developed local knowledge tourism perceived value scale has good reliability and validity.

The formal survey to validate the scale

The sample size was finally established at 400 by considering important factors such as the size of Guilin City, the number of measured items, and the time period in which the survey is conducted. The survey was carried out in a mixed way. The face-to face survey was done at five major scenic areas of Guilin, including the East and West Alley, Longsheng Rice Terraces, Guangxi Ethnic Tourism Museum, etc. And the Internet survey was conducted with the online survey firm Wenjuanxing (a survey software) from June to July 2022. A total of 456 questionnaires were collected, including 256 from the site and 200 from the internet. After excluding questionnaires with short filling time and consistent answers for all questions, 412 valid questionnaires were finally obtained, with an effective rate of 90.35%. The sample size has fully reached the standard and can be used for subsequent confirmatory data analysis following the suggestions by Hair (2009) . Only those who had a local knowledge tourism experience in Guilin over the last 12 months were invited for the survey. A total of 57.3% of the respondents were male and 93.7% are aged between 21 and 50, which indicates that young and middle-aged tourists show more interest in local knowledge tourism. Local knowledge tourism seems to be more popular among tourists with higher education background as 70.9% of the respondents had a college/university degree. This may be related to its knowledge-oriented attributes. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, 57% of the respondents were from Guangxi and the rest mainly from the neighboring provinces.

The descriptive statistical analysis of the formal survey suggests that the overall mean values of FV, EV, SV, CV, and SAV were 3.98, 3.80, 3.79, 3.92, and 3.45, respectively. The SAV score was still relatively low, but higher than 3.16 in the pilot surveys. The data skewness coefficient of each measurement element is between −0.931 and −0.022 with an absolute value less than 2, and the kurtosis coefficient is between −0.943 and 1.481 with an absolute value less than 8, which indicates that samples are normally distributed. The factor analysis suggested that the explained variance of the first factor without rotation was 27.410%, smaller than 40%, and there was no large amount of explained variance concentrated in one factor, indicating that the influence of the deviation of the common method was small and acceptable.

Reliability and validity tests

Cronbach’s α coefficient and combined reliability CR value are used to test the reliability of each latent variable in the theoretical model to determine the consistency and stability of the data. As shown in Table 8 , the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the total scale has reached 0.840, and ranges from 0.810 to 0.850 for each latent variable (>0.7). At the same time, the CR value of the combined reliability of each latent variable was between 0.803 and 0.850 (>0.7). According to the reliability test standard proposed by Fornell and Larcker (1981) , the measurement of each latent variable has good reliability.

Reliability test of the measurement model ( N = 412).

The validity test is conducted from two aspects: aggregate validity and discriminant validity. As can be seen from Table 9 , the standardized factor loading of each measurement item is between 0.643 and 0.866 (>0.5)and AVE values of each measurement item ranges from 0.505 to 0.655 (>0.5), which indicates the good aggregate validity. Regarding the discriminant validity, the square root of the extracted average variance of each latent variable is higher than the correlation coefficient between each latent variable (see Table 10 ), suggesting that the discriminant validity is also satisfactory.

Discriminant validity test ( N = 412).

Data source: this study. The bold value is the square root of the mean variance extraction of each variable. When it is greater than the correlation coefficient between any two variables, we can say that the discriminant validity between the latent variables is good.

***Represents P < 0.001, meaning that it is significant at the confidence level of 0.001.

Fit results of the measurement model ( N = 412).

Test of the measurement model

This study constructed a five-factor model of tourist perceived value and used AMOS25.0 to conduct the confirmatory factor analysis. As illustrated in Table 10 , χ 2 /df is 1.505, which is between 1 and 3, and significant at the level of p < 0.001. RMR is 0.033, less than 0.05; RMSEA is 0.035, less than 0.08. Other fitting indices such as GFI, AGFI, NFI, RFI, IFI, TLI, and CFI have all reached the corresponding standards, indicating that it is a satisfactory model.

Through the above steps of the confirmatory factor analysis, the items on the local knowledge tourism experience value measurement scale are finally confirmed as shown in Table 11 .

Items on the local knowledge tourism perceived value scale.

Discussion and conclusion

Structure and characteristics of local knowledge tourism perceived values.

Based on the theory of customer perceived value and the case study of Guilin, China, this study has first identified five dimensions of perceived value that include FV, EV, SV, CV, and SAV of local knowledge tourism using grounded theory. Later, rigorous procedures have been followed to develop the related scale that consists of 18 items as illustrated in Table 11 above. Related tests indicate that the newly developed scale is of satisfactory reliability and validity. This study attempts to investigate the perceived value of local knowledge by tourists by tourists to fill the gap, which is conducive to its conservation and development. The development of local knowledge as a tourist attraction can highlight the distinct characteristics and local spirit of the destination, helping to strengthen the competitiveness of the destination.

Inspired by hierarchy of needs, Pearce and Caltabiano (1983) studied the progressive model of tourist demand and found that the higher the level of tourism motivation, the higher the demand will be. The local knowledge tourism perceived values identified by grounded theory in this study also showed corresponding progressive relationship between the tourist perceived values dimensions. As shown in Figure 1 below, the five identified local knowledge tourism perceived value dimensions form a corresponding internal relationship in line with the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The FV is reflected in the tourist perception that local knowledge can be utilized to meet the basic physiological needs such as food, accommodation and transportation. EV related to a variety of positive emotions that have been triggered during the tour. Local knowledge experience can stimulate tourists’ curiosity, association, and nostalgia, which may be transferred into emotions and feelings such as place identification and attachment to the destination and enhance tourists’ sense of belonging and safety. SV refers to social benefits such as making more new friends through the study of local knowledge in tourism activities. Other benefits may include the deepening of host–tourist interaction, closer ties between friends and improved family relationship, which is corresponding to the satisfaction of the belonging and love needs in the Maslow’s hierarchy. The main motivation of local knowledge tourism is to seek and acquire knowledge. As such, tourism activities will improve participants’ understanding of the destination with regards to its natural environment and traditional culture and promote mutual understanding and respect between hosts and guests. Finally, the value of self-actualization implies that some tourists manage to enhance their cultural literacy and realize their personal dreams and aspirations in the local knowledge tourism experience. This corresponds to the highest level of self-actualization in the Maslow’s hierarchy. As a tourism activity typically focusing on cultural experience, the perceived value of local knowledge tourism presents a systematization and multi-dimensional features. With the deepening of the tourism experience and host–tourist interaction, the perceived value of the tourist of the will evolve step by step from satisfaction of basic philological needs to the advanced level such as self-actualization to meet the emotional, social, and self-actualization needs of the tourist.

Hierarchical model of local knowledge tourism perceived values. Data source: this study.

Research contribution: theoretical implications

Perceived value, a vital concept in the field of quality consumer experience, has been extensively utilized in tourism research. This study introduces the novel concept of local knowledge tourism within the realm of heritage tourism, thereby expanding the research scope on non-heritage tourism and enhancing the understanding of perceived value in tourism contexts. Furthermore, the development of a new scale contributes to a deeper comprehension of the content, components, and unique characteristics of local knowledge tourism from the perspective of tourism experience and perceived value. This scale can serve as a valuable tool for future studies, such as investigating the impacts of perceived values related to local knowledge on tourist behaviors.

Research contribution: managerial implications

From a management perspective, this study emphasizes the distinctive values of local knowledge in tourism development, fostering the advancement of cultural tourism products and enhancing the overall competitiveness of destinations. The identified perceived values of tourists provide insights into the diverse dimensions and levels of the local knowledge tourism experience, thereby facilitating market segmentation and the formulation of targeted marketing strategies for this niche cultural tourism market. For instance, the research categorizes local knowledge tourists into functional experience, emotional attachment, knowledge seeking and development, and self-actualization types. From the tourists’ standpoint, this study contributes to enhancing their travel experiences, increasing their engagement, and deepening their appreciation of the traditions and culture of the destination.

Limitations and future research

Despite several contributions, this study still has some limitations. Firstly, local knowledge varies a lot in forms and types, and so does the tourist when it comes to their background, motivation, preference, and demand. To broaden this exploratory study, future research can be further conducted under different local knowledge tourism settings. The comparative study can be expanded to tourists of different age, occupation, education, and income level. Second, this research is carried out carried out primarily after the pandemic outbreak, the national border of China remains close to international tourists up to the end of the study. As a consequence, the interview participants and online travelogue used as secondary data were all Chinese. When China’s inbound markets is restored, the in-depth interviews can be conducted with international tourists of different cultural and social background. Furthermore, local knowledge tourism is diverse and influenced by various cultural factors, and the perceived values of tourists may vary across different destinations. Future research should include a wider range of cultural contexts to enhance the generalizability of our findings.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The ethics committee waived the requirement of written informed consent for participation.

Author contributions

HZ: data curation, investigation, validation, and writing—review and editing. HZ and JZ: formal analysis, methodology, resources, software, visualization, and writing–original draft. JJ and JZ: funding acquisition, project administration, and supervision. All authors contributed to the conceptualization, article, and approved the submitted version.

Funding Statement

This manuscript is a chapter of a doctoral dissertation and supported by the National Natural Science Fund of China (No. 42271238), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2021A1515011627), and the Guangxi first-class discipline construction project of tourism management of Guilin Tourism University.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Wānaka man’s tourism knowledge helps improve local environment and educate visitors

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Tim Barke has put his tourism knowledge to good use, helping tell the stories of Wānaka locals to visitors and working on improving the environment.

Losing his tourism job to the Covid-19 pandemic inspired Wānaka man Tim Barke to use his knowledge of the industry to help improve the environment, tell locals’ stories and educate visitors on what makes the town tick, Alison Smith writes.

When Tim Barke bought his Wānaka property just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, he planned to enjoy the rural lifestyle and commute to Queenstown for his corporate job.

Heading up Totally Tourism, the umbrella company for 12 aviation, adventure tourism and cruise boat enterprises, the pandemic meant Barke soon found himself out of that job and working shoulder to shoulder with the Jobs For Nature workforce.

“We clambered around the mountains and cut pine trees down,” he said.

“It was amazing - brutally cold - our coldest days were minus 8 degrees.”

Barke said he got to work with his son, who as a mountain bike track builder, was also out of a job.

“It was an experience I would never have got to have, spending four months around the mountain with my son.

“Everybody on the team was from different backgrounds – ex-CEOs, people who washed dishes – all earning the same. It was an amazing experience.”

The experience led Barke to the environmental protection organisation, Wai Wānaka, which aims to improve waterway health in the catchment rurally.

Wai Wānaka achieves this by engaging with 84 per cent of the Upper Clutha’s larger farms and involving more than 60 properties larger than 20ha, such as Barke’s.

Once borders were reopened a role came up with Lake Wānaka Tourism.

Barke saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the local industry, collaborating with Wai Wānaka to put his tourism knowledge into environmental action.

“One of the reasons we bought our property is that we’re really interested in soil regeneration and regenerative farming practices, and trying stuff out to see what makes a difference,” he said.

“We’re small enough to be able to try stuff without it costing too much, but big enough to try it in different sections.”

The Wai Wānaka team helped with soil analysis and guidance on tools, such as visual soil assessments, and rabbit and wilding pine control.

Wai Wānaka also connected Barke to his neighbours in the sub-catchment of Poplar Beach.

The organisation has helped establish six of the seven catchment groups and four small landholder groups operating in the Central Lakes District.

These groups determine their priorities for each catchment, receiving a pool of funding to help with group facilitation. They also gain access to experts, tools and resources.

The science behind how the groups operate is based on a three-year research project involving more than 75 farm businesses around New Zealand, funded by Our Land and Water.

Wai Wānaka’s actions are based on the Community Catchment Plan.

Barke believed Wai Wānaka made it easier for locals to meet and work with their neighbours and provided invaluable outcomes with a science-based plan.

“As communities, we’re a lot more mobile than we used to be, so people move house, towns and regions more than in the old days, so those networks are harder to build up and keep,” he said.

“For me personally, this has been a really beneficial opportunity to get to know my neighbours. We were new to Wānaka, and it shortcuts the process.

“By having those experts, it gives you a lot more confidence than just catching up with neighbours and spitballing ideas.

“You can fast-track things easier when you have scientific data behind the decisions you are making.”

He said getting people together, and understanding what worked and what didn’t, had been an interesting process.

“Overall, we’re all trying to achieve the same thing - to be custodians of the land and help the health of the land and the ecosystems within the land.

“Some of those in our catchment group’s sole income is produced from the land but they can only do that if the land is healthy.”

Barke said there were “huge benefits” to the groups if they could achieve cost-effective processes that helped regenerate the soil and ecosystems.

Barke’s lifetime career is in tourism, beginning in the late 1980s.

Right from the start he could see the opportunities that tourism presented - but also the potential impacts on the natural resources that it relied on - something that travellers were also starting to realise.

Barke said it was partly about the destination planning and how a region operated.

“Our job used to be to sell as much tourism product overseas as we could - it was literally bums on seats.

“Through the brand repositioning and destination management process that we spent two years doing, we found out that the community was rapidly feeling pressured by tourism and feeling like they were being pushed out, with tourism taking precedence over locals.”

Barke and his team rebuilt www.wanaka.co.nz to tell stories about who Wānaka’s locals are, what they do as part of their ideal lifestyle and how the locals look after their place.

“Then we offer an invitation to the people that resonates with.”

He said that by doing this, visitors had a better idea of how to fit into the community.

“We’re trying to create opportunities for visitors to get involved with and get a better understanding of how we look after the place and their role in that.

“It’s attracting the people who are going to be the best fit.

“It’s [also] encouraging tourism products that have a regenerative focus, like having people going four-wheel driving on high country stations to check pests, and learning why that’s being done, or approaching the selling as a storytelling process rather than marketing.”

The outcome is twofold.

“The people wanting to come here have a much better understanding of where they’re coming to and who they’re coming to.

“Therefore, they’ve got a better understanding of what they can expect but also what’s expected of them when they come.”

Collaborating with Wai Wānaka’s team, the tourism offering is a genuine outcome for the good of the catchment.

Back on his land, Barke was keen to progress, alongside his neighbours, the reforestation of a barren hill face that had only weeds and rabbits on it.

“If we can get a native ecosystem going, we can connect Wānaka with Luggate through a natural corridor and potentially give people access to explore it.

“That in itself would have an impact on the weather – having a decent-sized forest can affect how much precipitation it gets.”

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Immersive technologies for tourism: a systematic review

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• Published: 22 June 2022
• Volume 24 , pages 181–219, ( 2022 )

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• Eko Harry Pratisto   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8576-8980 1 , 2 ,
• Nik Thompson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0783-1371 1 &
• Vidyasagar Potdar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7292-5462 1  

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This review provides a comprehensive view of immersive technology in tourism by critically analysing prior scholarly work. More specifically, it identifies the recent use of immersive technology in this field and the potential challenges it poses. This systematic review follows PRISMA guidelines and involves four key steps—identifying research questions, defining keywords, selecting studies based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, and synthesising results. It focuses on immersive technology in tourism-related peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2012 to 2020. The papers were selected from ten prominent journal databases. Some databases used combinations of search queries but with inclusion and exclusion criteria. This systematic review builds on the existing reviews by adding knowledge regarding state-of-the-art immersive technology usage in tourism and its integration with other technology. This review additionally identifies the potential challenges of implementing immersive technology in tourism. Finally, it presents a set of directions for future research in this space. In practice, the findings from this review can make both software developers and tourism providers aware of the potential of immersive technology in tourism. Software developers might consider appropriate designs that suit such usage, and tourism providers might consider using immersive technology to promote tourism destinations and provide a support system to maximise the benefits of immersive technology.

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AVR Technologies in Sustainable Tourism: A Bibliometric Review

Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality in Tourism

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1 Introduction

Tourism represents a product of modern, complex society (Walton 2018 ) and is traditionally defined as people travelling to a destination outside of their usual home and work environments for leisure (United Nations World Tourism Organization 2019 ). The tourism industry has been deeply affected by rapid technological change (tom Dieck et al. 2018c ), which has been felt even before the restrictions on personal movement caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Technology can offer new experiences in a simulated environment (e.g. immersive technology) without requiring physical travel. Immersive technology thus provides a suitable environment for tourism promotion, experience enhancement, or education (Guttentag 2010 ; Bekele et al. 2018 ). Advances in foundational technology now blur the boundary between the real world and the virtual environment by giving users an experience with a sense of immersion (Lee et al. 2013a , b). From this perspective, immersive technology enables tourism stakeholders to enhance tourists’ satisfaction since consumers can choose and modify such an experience to a degree that was once considered impossible (Williams and Hobson 1995 ).

Immersive technology concepts can be considered on a reality-virtuality continuum (see Fig.  1 ): at the former end is a real environment, and at the latter end is a computer-generated virtual environment. Within that spectrum are two concepts—augmented reality (AR) and augmented virtuality (AV), which fall under the umbrella terminology of mixed reality (MR). In addition, there is virtual reality (VR), which is a fully virtual environment.

Reality–virtuality continuum (Milgram et al. 1995 )

In the context of this study, immersive technology blurs the boundary between the real physical world and the virtual world, letting users experience a sense of immersion (Slater and Wilbur 1997 ). Referring to the reality–virtuality continuum, as the direction from the physical world point moves toward the virtual environment end, the technology delivers more virtual elements on the device’s screen. This means that the number of virtual objects seen by users increase, whereas the number of physical objects they see decreases. Most notably, immersive technology includes AR and VR. Whereas AR can overlay the view of the user’s current environment with digital objects (Azuma 1997 ), VR can create a virtual environment that the user can seamlessly interact with in real time (Guttentag 2010 ). Both AR and VR can increase the quality of visitors’ experience of a destination (Yung and Khoo-Lattimore 2019 ).

The VR industry is proliferating, with a projected increase in market size from 6.2 billion US dollars in 2019 to more than 16 billion US dollars in 2022 (Alsop 2020 ). This is in stark contrast with the tourism industry. The United Nations World Tourism Organization ( 2019 ) reported approximately 180 million fewer international arrivals between January and March 2021 than in the first quarter of 2020. Expressly, the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide in 2020 declined by 73% compared to 2019, and by another 83% in 2021 compared to 2020. Immersive technology is still viable even though the tourism industry in many regions was put on hold in 2020 due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. For example, in Australia, the number of visitor arrivals declined in February 2020 when the Australian Government first introduced travel restrictions. International arrivals fell 99.6% compared to the previous year (Tourism Australia 2020 ). As the global pandemic continues, a higher potential exists for immersive technology to become a viable alternative to travelling.

Immersive technology has been adopted and implemented in various tourism areas. The technology provides a surrogate experience that can be used to convince potential visitors to travel to a tourism destination (Chung et al. 2018 ; Flavián et al. 2019 ; Lee et al. 2019 ; Kim et al. 2020 ). The benefit usage of immersive technology includes navigation systems (Balduini et al. 2014 ; Sommerauer and Müller 2014 ), tourism promotion (Lacka 2020 ; Li and Chen 2019 ; Kim et al. 2020 ), and enhanced user experiences during visitation (Puig et al. 2020 ; Errichiello et al. 2019 ; Rodrigues et al. 2019 ).

Researchers such as Baker et al. ( 2017 ), Beck et al. ( 2019 ), Wei ( 2019 ); and Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) have conducted reviews on AR and VR in tourism. Wei ( 2019 ) located major key dimensions of user behaviour in prior AR and VR-related studies using a framework representing stimuli, decisions and consequences cause-and-effect relationships. The author also discussed the development of theory and methodology within AR and VR in tourism research. In addition, Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) reviewed AR and VR usage in the tourism sub-sectors of marketing, education, and tourism experience enhancement. These reviews are valuable for understanding immersive technology adoption in tourism concerning their specific areas of interest. However, questions remain regarding the extent of immersive technology usage in tourism and its potential challenges. Identifying and mapping the recent immersive technology development in tourism will help researchers identify the technology usage trends and determine the important areas for further investigation.

To explore this timely area of technological development and research, we present in this article a systematic review of the current state of research into immersive technology use in tourism. Therefore, this review aims to build knowledge on what has been investigated about immersive technology in tourism from existing literature. Additionally, this review includes suggestions for future research. The systematic review is achieved through the following objectives: (1) extract related existing literature from databases from a specified period, (2) select the literature based on inclusion criteria, (3) synthesise the selected literature to answer the research questions, and (4) identify research gaps for future research recommendations.

2 Existing reviews

This review identified four prior review articles (see Table 1 ). One AR-related review (Baker et al. 2017 ) focused on mobile AR for hard-of-hearing visitors. Beck et al. ( 2019 ) focused on VR, classifying it based on the immersive level. Two reviews (Yung and Khoo-Lattimore 2019 ; Wei 2019 ) addressed how both AR and VR are used in the tourism context in general. This section discusses each of the previous reviews’ scope to highlight their differences.

All the existing reviews had similar methodologies, including searching for articles in selected databases, screening the articles using inclusion and exclusion criteria, and reporting findings. ScienceDirect was the most used database in three reviews (Baker et al. 2017 ; Beck et al. 2019 ; Wei 2019 ), followed by Emerald and EBSCOhost. The studies by Wei ( 2019 ) and Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) only included peer-reviewed journal articles, in contrast with Beck et al. ( 2019 ), who also included peer-reviewed conference papers. Baker et al. ( 2017 ) did not state which type of articles were included.

The existing reviews revealed interesting findings regarding immersive technology implementation in tourism. For example, Baker et al. ( 2017 ) identified 11 major elements required to provide a mobile AR system for hard-of-hearing visitors. Those elements might be useful to ensure that the targeted user receives the correct information from the AR system. Two other studies were concerned with the terminology surrounding the technology. Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) highlighted AR and VR-related terminology issues: several terms (virtual environment, VR and virtual world) were used inconsistently.

Similarly, Beck et al. ( 2019 ) focused on VR classification, including non-immersive, semi-immersive, and fully immersive VR in tourism. The authors argued that VR should deliver high-quality images to help users avoid motion sickness and encourage them to visit the destination in real life. Wei ( 2019 ) examined AR and VR research development in hospitality and tourism. The author identified major dimensions and classified them using the stimuli–dimension–consequence framework.

Some suggestions for future research can be derived from the existing reviews. A study is needed that focuses on technical aspects such as content, design, interactivity (Beck et al. 2019 ) and cross-cultural approaches (Wei 2019 ) to understand how users perceptions of immersive technology might vary. A comparison study could also examine the usage of immersive technology such as AR, VR and MR in tourism. Finally, Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) suggested that future research identify the impact of having AR or VR booths in travel agencies and information centres and the possible applications of VR images or videos produced from 360° cameras.

Based on the existing reviews’ scopes, we identified the distinct new contributions made in our work. First, this review complements the findings on VR and AR presented by Wei ( 2019 ) and Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) and the use of this technology in tourism sectors, including VR with 360° technology. Second, this study covers all immersive technology applications in tourism research rather than focusing only on AR (Baker et al. 2017 ) or VR (Beck et al. 2019 ). Finally, this review considers the characteristics of immersive technology, its integration with other technology and potential challenges.

3 Methodology

This study utilises a systematic literature review to answer three research questions related to immersive technology in tourism by summarising research findings to obtain a comprehensive view of the state-of-the-art use of immersive technology and identify potential issues for future research. This section details the systematic literature review process by implementing a guideline proposed by Okoli ( 2015 ).

3.1 Identifying the research questions

In the previous section, we distinguished this review’s contribution from that of previous review articles. This review focuses on state-of-the-art immersive technology in tourism to answer several research questions. We followed the PICO framework (Pollock and Berge 2018 ) to develop research questions based on the aim of this review. The research questions are as follows:

Research question 1 (RQ1) : What characteristics of immersive technology are used in tourism research?

Research question 2 (RQ2) : To what extent does immersive technology play a role in the tourism visiting experience?

Research question 3 (RQ3): What are the potential challenges of developing immersive technology for the tourism domain?

3.2 Defining search keywords

Given the objective of this study, keywords needed to be defined to obtain relevant articles from databases. Our article search strategy included all published articles related to AR, VR, and MR since those terms are within the domain of immersive technology. The keywords ‘augmented reality’, ‘virtual reality’, ‘mixed reality’, ‘360 video’, ‘360 panoramic’, and ‘360 degree’ were included since these are present in many VR-related studies. The query also included the keywords ‘tourist’, ‘tourism’, and ‘visitor’ to keep the focus on tourism. The searching technique consisted of combined keywords and Boolean operators such as ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ to narrow the results. We included articles published from 2012 until 2020 to obtain an insight into the use of state-of-the-art immersive technology in tourism. We also only included articles published in peer-reviewed journals in English. Articles from proceedings, conferences, magazines, and books were excluded from this review. The search query was then executed on the following ten electronic databases: ACM Digital Library, EBSCOhost, Emerald Insight, IEEE Xplore, ProQuest, SAGE, ScienceDirect, Taylor and Francis, Web of Science and Scopus, considering the boundaries of the various definitions of immersive technology, time range, keywords, and type of articles. We used ten databases to ensure that we did not miss any relevant articles. Emerald Insight, Web of Science, and Scopus use a slightly different syntax, meaning we changed the search query slightly to suit their characteristics. The search query we developed to guide the literature search is outlined in Table 2 . The search query was applied to titles, abstracts and keywords in selected databases.

3.3 Study selection

As part of the study selection stage, inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined to produce relevant articles to the research questions. This review excluded inappropriate terms, such as ‘non-immersive VR’, often applied during the article evaluation process. For example, we only included articles using applications with a first-person perspective. Articles using applications with a third-person perspective, such as Second Life (Linden Research 2019 ), were excluded. Articles discussing VR technology and covering almost all of the user’s range of vision through, for example, image or video projection on the surrounding walls (Ghadban et al. 2013 ) were included in this study.

Regarding the VR content, 360° images and video are common types of content found in the selected articles. Such content is preferable for promoting tourism destinations because it gives the potential tourist a view of the prospective destination most like real life. The computer-generated virtual environment might be suitable for reconstructing a specific situation or learning context.

Table 3 details a full list of inclusion and exclusion criteria for the screening process of the selected articles. The search query generated 1017 articles from the ten databases (see Table 4 ).

All articles identified in the search result were imported to the Endnote X9 bibliographic database (Clarivative Analytics 2019 ). The screening process followed the Preferred Reporting of Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) flow diagram (Moher et al. 2009 ), as illustrated in Fig.  2 . The articles were then subject to the three-level screening process.

Article selection based on the PRISMA flow diagram

The first level filtered studies to eliminate any (1) duplication, (2) anonymous studies, and (3) studies not published in a peer-reviewed journal as an original article. This reduced the number of articles from 1017 to 587.

In the second level, the titles and abstracts were sorted through to elucidate studies discussing AR, VR or MR in tourism. During this stage, 260 articles were deemed relevant to our study and then needed to be identified and assessed by reading the full text.

The third screening level involved full-text review to ensure that each article met the criteria, as listed in Table 3 . This synthesis resulted in 88 relevant articles. The information from these articles was extracted and coded in Microsoft Excel before being reviewed and examined iteratively.

4 Results and discussion

This study aimed to illuminate some exciting aspects of immersive technology in tourism research. Immersive technology offers enormous potential in this domain. Given the specified inclusion and exclusion criteria, 88 peer-reviewed articles (see Appendix) published over the last nine years were relevant to this research topic. This review categorises the immersive technology from the selected articles into AR and VR based on the technology’s characteristics. Referring to Fig.  1 , the technology used in several studies (Kasinathan et al. 2017 ; Nisi et al. 2018 ; Raptis et al. 2018 ; Hammady et al. 2020 ) might qualify as AR despite being referred to as MR. As seen in Fig.  3 , AR has been a common immersive technology used in tourism research. In 2018, 15 articles on tourism research using AR were published, the highest number of articles to be published in the field in one year. In 2019, the number of articles on VR usage in tourism research peaked with ten articles published.

Article published distribution over time

Table 5 shows the nature of the study in each of the selected articles. Design research and qualitative studies were dominant at 40.9%. A quantitative method, proceeded by experiences in immersive technology, was the most common data collection approach to capture participants’ experiences with and perceptions of the technology. The remaining articles were qualitative (8.0%), conceptual (5.7%) and mixed method (4.5%).

Table 6 focuses on the research locations of 47 empirical studies. Most research on immersive technology in tourism during the time defined in this study took place in Taiwan (14.9%), followed by the United Kingdom (12.8%) and the United States (10.6%). Four out of 47 empirical studies compared immersive technology usage in more than one country.

Most of the articles listed in Appendix focused on tourism destinations and attractions, with few articles on immersive technology usage in tourism support such as hotel (Bogicevic et al. 2019 ; Israel et al. 2019 ; Zeng et al. 2020 ) and cruise ship (Yung et al. 2019 ) promotions. Some other tourism sectors, such as travel agencies (Bush 2022 ) and airlines (Emirates 2022 ), have been using VR to promote their products, but we did not find any articles within the selected literatures. A possible explanation is that some tourism sectors see the value of immersive technology, such as VR, as showing destination or location instead of the journey to the destination. Otherwise, there is still little or no research covering immersive technology usage in those tourism sectors.

We subjected the selected articles to the review process to better understand immersive technology in tourism and discover potential future research. The following sections elaborate on the selected articles' findings to answer the proposed research questions.

4.1 The current state of immersive technology usage in tourism research (RQ1: What characteristics of immersive technology are used in tourism research?)

4.1.1 augmented reality features in tourism research.

Table 7 shows all the devices used in the selected AR-related articles. Mobile devices (smartphone or tablet PC) were the most common device used (76.3%). This is not surprising given that mobile devices are convenient to carry during travel and inexpensive compared to the other AR devices such as Microsoft HoloLens, Google Glass, or Meta One glasses.

AR combines a virtual object with the real environment in real time. The user can interact with the virtual object that blends the real world in three-dimensional perspectives (Azuma 1997 ). An AR system works in the presence of a trigger, which is a stimulus that initiates it to begin the virtual object augmentation on the device screen (Edwards-Stewart et al. 2016 ). Triggers can be a QR code printed on paper, an image, a real object, or a device location. Location-based AR was dominant in 37.3% of studies (see Table 8 ), while a trigger using a camera sensor, either markerless or marker-based, was present in 18.6% and 13.6% of studies, respectively. Four studies (6.8%) used AR with camera and location sensors as the trigger.

Some studies have built on the AR system’s capability to improve the user’s experience while exploring a location or object. Object recognition (markerless or marker-based) with geolocation feature addition is one example. The combined use of object recognition and geolocation provides spatial information for tour route decisions (Chu et al. 2012 ), improves the AR system’s accuracy, and makes it easier for the user to correctly recognise the object or place of interest and use that information in the future (Santos et al. 2017 ). Location-based AR uses a global positioning system (GPS) or beacon as the trigger. However, a beacon is preferable for indoor situations because building structures might block the signal used by GPS (Neumann et al. 1999 ). The combined AR trigger helps users explore a particular cultural site (Nisi et al. 2018 ; Gimeno et al. 2017 ) or city (Han et al. 2018 ; tom Dieck and Jung 2018 ).

The AR system’s integration with other technology is another option to enhance the user’s experience. This is more adaptive than a basic AR system and brings more relevant information to match users’ profiles and interests. Other people’s opinions also influence decision-making. For example, a person can obtain information from social media platforms such as Twitter about a tourism destination based on someone else’s opinion (Balduini et al. 2012 , 2014 ). Social media might influence a person’s interest in visiting a tourism destination.

Several of the selected articles adopted cloud technology in the AR system. García-Crespo et al. ( 2016 ) proposed a framework for cultural entertainment centred on a smart city with AR that employs cloud-based technology. Moreover, two studies used cloud computing for media storage (Lee et al. 2017 ) and speech-based query processing (Lin and Chen 2017 ). Rodrigues et al. ( 2019 ) used an AR system that provides experiences through the five basic human senses. While the AR system delivers visual and audio representing two senses (sight and sound), the attached physical mobile device stimulates other senses: touch, smell and taste. It allows the user to have an immersive five-sense experience during object observation.

Spatial marking offers a different immersive level in AR. Four studies employed Microsoft HoloLens (Raptis et al. 2018 ; Hammady et al. 2020 ) and Meta One glasses (Pedersen et al. 2017 ; Oh et al. 2018 ). These devices take the immersion of AR a step further by overlaying digital objects without a trigger. Instead, the devices track through the user’s environment and anchor the digital object to the real environment on display. Little research exists in the tourism area regarding using these devices, and there are many related academic research opportunities.

4.1.2 Virtual reality features in tourism research

VR typically immerses the user in a computer-produced or alternative environment. The VR experience becomes realistic as the virtual environment blocks the user’s real-world view. Users immerse themselves in the experience and have a sense of belief that they appear in the alternate world through the help of devices such as head-mounted devices (HMDs) or ‘cave’-like rooms (Hobson and Williams 1995 ; Ghadban et al. 2013 ). An HMD unit is a device worn on the head, covering both eyes. HMDs can be low-cost and use a smartphone to show the virtual environment or more advanced, such as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Alternatively, the user can experience VR in a room with a virtual environment projected onto all walls. When VR uses space in this way, it is called cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE).

As illustrated in Table 9 , HMDs were the most popular devices (66.7%) in the reviewed articles. HMD is ideal for experiencing VR since the user’s view of the real-world is blocked entirely and replaced by a virtual environment. In some of the selected articles, VR was used to restore objects and the environment by generating a virtual environment to simulate a specific situation in the past (Kersten et al. 2018 ; Errichiello et al. 2019 ; Ghadban et al. 2013 ), for marketing (Lin et al. 2020 ), and for additional entertainment during visitation (Puig et al. 2020 ). Interestingly, more than half of the selected VR-related articles used VR with 360 O technology content (see Table 10 ). Although this meets VR’s characteristic of immersing the user in another world, it is not a computer-generated environment, and no user interactivity is involved. Instead of interacting with the virtual object, the user can only view the surrounding environment from a defined specific point of view. The 360° technology is a new form of photography and filmmaking recorded with a special camera. However, this has been widely known by most people as VR, due to the large amount of such content on YouTube and Facebook. Nonetheless, the 360° VR content might benefit market tourism destinations by simulating the real environment of a location. Hence, significant potential use of VR remains in certain aspects of tourism, such as planning and management, marketing, entertainment, education, accessibility, and heritage preservation (Guttentag 2010 ).

4.2 Immersive technology applications within the tourism area (RQ2: To what extent does immersive technology play a role in the tourism visiting experience?)

Immersive technology offers academic and tourism stakeholders numerous opportunities in many tourism areas (see Fig.  4 ). Immersive technology usage has potential to improve tourism by increasing the number of visitors. It is also expected to increase awareness of lesser-known tourism destinations. This might be relevant because people are currently not travelling as much as before the global pandemic, and they might be interested in learning of new places. In this review, the tourism areas found in AR-related studies included AR for tour guidance, navigation, education, marketing, heritage preservation, entertainment, and accessibility. Previous studies also used VR for marketing and heritage preservation. The following section details the findings of each of the categories.

Immersive technology usage in tourism areas

4.2.1 Immersive technology as a marketing tool

4.2.1.1 augmented reality.

Marketing is one of the tourism areas where immersive technology was implemented in the selected articles. The technology can serve as a promotional tool or facilitate research focusing on users’ intentions to visit the tourism destination. This review identified four studies that used AR as a promotional tool. Jung et al. ( 2015 ) observed the impact of marker-based AR system quality on the intention of visitors to Jeju Island to recommend others to use the AR system. They argued that the quality of the AR that covers the information content, system quality and service quality positively influences the user’s satisfaction, leading to the intention to recommend the AR system. This view is supported by Chung et al. ( 2015 ), who stated that the visual appeal of the AR system, with the support of adequate technical support, influences the user to use AR and visit the tourism destination. Other studies focused on how AR features promote tourism destinations, such as Lin and Chen ( 2017 ). They found that users engage more with the AR system if they feel that the videos of attractions that they post online can help other users. The next challenge is how the tourism provider persuades visitors to revisit the tourism destination. Lee et al. ( 2017 ) explored how mobile AR can increase tourists’ motivation to revisit a destination by exploring the post-travel experience using the entrance ticket as a scannable souvenir through the AR system.

4.2.1.2 Virtual reality

VR as a marketing tool in tourism research was more common than AR, specifically pre-visit tourism destination promotion. When potential tourists decide to visit a destination, they are likely to search for information about it or consider whether it is worth visiting. VR adoption in tourism creates opportunities to promote destinations (Cheeyong et al. 2017 ; Tussyadiah et al. 2018b ; Adachi et al. 2020 ; Lin et al. 2020 ; Lin and Chen 2017 ). A qualitative study by tom Dieck et al. ( 2018c ) reported that VR influences tourists to use the application, revisit the destination, recommend it to others and experience the destination from a different perspective (e.g. observing it from a helicopter instead of from the street). One of the characteristics of VR is a sense of presence. The users feel that their presence moves from the real world to the virtual world. VR provides a better sense of presence than AR, leading to increasing destination image formation (Yung et al. 2019 ), which leads to visit intention (Tussyadiah et al. 2018b ). Experiencing VR with a HMD was also found to be a better promotion tool and provide better sensory stimulation and a more immersive experience compared to other systems (Flavián et al. 2019 ), such as a computer (Adachi et al. 2020 ), photographs (Yeh et al. 2017 ) or two-dimensional videos (Wagler and Hanus 2018 ). As a marketing tool, VR should provide content that represents the real conditions of the tourism destination. The tourism provider needs to ensure that the visual perspective of a destination they offer is genuine and as realistic as possible from the user’s perspective (Israel et al. 2019 ). However, the VR developer should consider the length of information if the content includes video (Marchiori et al. 2018 ). Additionally, in a recent quantitative study, Zeng et al. ( 2020 ) stressed that VR could add promotional value as an extension to online reviews.

4.2.2 Immersive technology for heritage preservation

One usage of AR and VR systems is reconstructing an object or environment since these systems produce computer-generated objects. AR systems enable the user to experience a three-dimensional virtual object based on the real heritage object, which might no longer exist in one piece or be possible to access. This way, the user can imagine and understand the object’s shape without looking at the real object.

4.2.2.1 Augmented reality

Four of the selected articles used AR for heritage preservation. Madsen and Madsen ( 2015 ) developed a three-dimensional visualisation of a castle chapel. The visitors experience the digital cultural heritage using a tablet connected to a large TV screen or a tablet PC. The authors argued that the AR system should provide more information and storytelling elements since the visitor only spends a short time using the AR system and does not fully explore the chapel. Another study by Gimeno et al. ( 2017 ) examined mobile AR for Casa Batlló, a landmark building in Spain. The AR system uses two approaches. First, it uses the gyroscope sensor and Bluetooth to trigger virtual objects to blend with the real world. As a result, the AR system augments the virtual modelled elements or furniture and blends this with the real world captured by the camera. Second, the user can scan the building’s physical model using the camera to see the virtual building on the screen, including detailed representations of the interior of each room on every floor of the building. Roongrungsi et al. ( 2017 ) designed a marker-based AR system to augment the Wat Phra Sri Rattana Mahathat temple. Panou et al. ( 2018 ) discussed the software architecture of an outdoor AR system that enables the user to experience virtual historical buildings around Chania, Greece. The system implements a gamification concept to let the user engage and interact more with cultural information.

4.2.2.2 Virtual reality

Other researchers have adopted VR to simulate heritage objects or buildings. A lab experiment by Ghadban et al. ( 2013 ) showed VR as an interactive environment to explore Hisham’s Palace in Palestine. The critical challenge of rebuilding the model was the remains of the physical building and the building’s limited history; both need to be right to ensure that the virtual, three-dimensional object is similar as possible to the real object in its time. Another example is a study by Kersten et al. ( 2018 ) that discussed a virtual model of a wooden model of Solomon’s temple at the Hamburg Museum using a VR system. The system enables the user to virtually experience the temple’s environment despite never visiting the temple in real life. Errichiello et al. ( 2019 ) observed the user experience in a past environment, particularly a ship launch during the Grand Tour of Naples and listening to music at San Teodoro Palace Hall Music. They argued that VR might be an effective way for visitors to enjoy a museum tour to obtain comprehensive information from different perspectives. The result showed that the users had a high intention of reusing the VR system and sharing their experience over the Internet. A mixed-method study by Puig et al. ( 2020 ) analysed the impact of a VR simulation of the Neolithic settlement of La Draga. The VR system provides a visual reconstruction of La Draga, where the user can interact with virtual Neolithic and non-Neolithic objects.

4.2.3 Immersive technology for education

This review categorises the usage of immersive technology to improve knowledge learning during visitation to a tourism destination. A crossover study by Sommerauer and Müller ( 2014 ) examined AR’s effect on gaining mathematical knowledge in an informal environment such as a museum. The authors concluded that AR could be a useful learning tool in formal and informal environments. A quasi-experimental study by Chang et al. ( 2015 ) observed mobile AR’s effectiveness in promoting learning performance at heritage sites in Taiwan. The authors stated that AR-guided participants acquired more knowledge about the heritage site than audio-guided and non-guided groups. Pendit et al. ( 2016 ) evaluated how AR might improve people’s enjoyment of learning about cultural heritage. The findings showed that the respondents enjoyed the AR’s cultural heritage learning experience. Tan and Lim ( 2017 ) implemented gamification in an AR system to improve visitors’ interest in exploring and learning about a historical place, Kellie’s Castle, in Malaysia. A study by Oh et al. ( 2018 ) used AR with Meta One glasses to observe how they can help users at a science museum learn about light refraction. The authors concluded that those who experienced game-based performance followed by non-game simulation performed better than a group who experienced these activities in the opposite order. A qualitative study by Yoon et al. ( 2018 ) observed an interactive AR used to learn about different types of scaffolds in a science museum.

4.2.4 Immersive technology as tour guidance

AR enhances the tourism experience in that the interactive virtual information overlays the real world. Our review found that tour guidance studies exclusively adopted AR technology, and it does appear to be the most appropriate technology to adopt when the user is physically located at the tourism destination. AR also provides additional interpretation resources to enhance user engagement with the observed object during visitation, significantly impacting the experience (Damala et al. 2013 ). The previous studies identified two types of devices for AR tour guidance: mobile devices and wearable devices (e.g. smart glasses).

4.2.4.1 Augmented reality with smart glasses

Smart glasses are wearable devices similar to regular eyeglasses equipped with a processing unit, various sensors and transparent lenses. The information displayed on the screen is integrated onto one or both lenses in front of the eyes, as if, from the AR user’s point of view, the digital information overlays the physical environment (Hein et al. 2017 ). Several studies employed wearable devices such as Google Glass (Mason 2016 ; tom Dieck et al. 2016 ; tom Dieck et al. 2018b ; Tussyadiah et al. 2018a ; Han et al. 2019a ), HoloLens (Hammady et al. 2020 ) and Meta One (Pedersen et al. 2017 ). Using wearable devices reflects the relationship between the human body and technology, where the user senses the device as part of their body (Tussyadiah et al. 2018a ). As a result, compared to an AR system that uses a mobile device, smart glasses offer a more immersive experience to the user, attractive and a balanced focus between the physical object and the device screen, while exploring tourism destinations (Mason 2016 ). Users were found to spend more time exploring the environment and engaging with the observed objects compared to without smart glasses (Hammady et al. 2020 ). On the other hand, tom Dieck et al. ( 2018b ) found that some participants, on their first experience using smart glasses, tended to have a stronger recollection of the information provided by the device than the paintings because they tended to pay more attention to the device than the environment.

Some smart glasses have display limitations that might impact the displayed information. Participants in a study by Mason ( 2016 ) emphasised the difficulty in reading text on the Google Glass display due to length limitations. Hence, tom Dieck et al. ( 2016 ) stressed that the application content should provide detailed and suitable information to help users experience tourism. The information also needs to be delivered in real time to pique the user’s interest and allow an uninterrupted leisure experience (Han et al. 2019b ; Choi and Kim 2017 ). Pedersen et al. ( 2017 ) supported the idea of implementing a reward system to lead users to more information and prompt them to proceed to the next object experience, thus making the visitation experience more enjoyable. Further, Damala et al. ( 2013 ) noted that the relevant content results from different stimuli induced during visitation rather than predefined content based on the user’s profile (e.g. adults, families).

4.2.4.2 Augmented reality using a mobile device

Modern mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablet PCs equipped with a camera, provide powerful computing to run AR-based applications. Because most mobile devices are less expensive than smart glasses, enhancing the tourism visitation experience is feasible. Given that so much information can be displayed on the device’s screen, observing how users divide their focus between the mobile device and the real object is interesting. A behavioural pattern study on painting appreciation by Chang et al. ( 2014 ) showed that users still enjoyed observing the real painting and did not look at the device’s screen excessively, although the AR system was considered a new technology for some of the study’s participants. Conversely, some participants in the Nisi et al. ( 2018 ) study reported feelings of isolation. The authors stated that the AR application indirectly made the users focus more on the smartphone screen than on physically interacting with the real object.

tom Dieck et al. ( 2018a ) found that an AR system attached to a place encouraged visitors to engage more with the tourism destination. This view is supported by Nisi et al. ( 2018 ), who reported that the combination of storytelling and the observed physical environment stimulated users’ curiosity and willingness to explore that environment further, making the tourism experience educational and valuable. The information provided in the AR system is critical to providing a simple user interface with personalised information (Han et al. 2018 ) and interaction (tom Dieck and Jung 2018 ). Rather than shrinking an entire computer-based website layout to fit on a mobile device screen, the information must be adapted to suit a mobile layout (Chung et al. 2018 ). Interestingly, different cultural characteristics can result in different technological adaptations. According to Jung et al. ( 2018 ), people who live in cultures that prioritise the group over the individual and rely on social norms showed stronger dependence on social influence. Their decision to use tourism-based AR is likely based on the influence of friends and family.

4.2.5 Immersive technology as a navigation device

Some of the reviewed articles used immersive technology as a navigation device. We found that similar to the tour guidance applications, that navigation also exclusively relied on AR technology due to its connection to the physical realm. An AR system, such as those mainly used in smartphones, uses location sensors such as Bluetooth, GPS and compasses to pinpoint a specific location. Balduini et al. ( 2012 ) and Balduini et al. ( 2014 ) designed BOTTARI, an AR system that provides a point-of-interest recommendation in Seoul based on the social media community’s weighted opinions. The system continuously analyses social media streams and processes the information into personalised recommendations about places in the city. Chu et al. ( 2012 ) evaluated the Yehliu Geopark mGuiding system. The application implements AR using GPS coordinates from the mobile device. A study by Kourouthanassis et al. ( 2015b ) examined eight mobile AR applications from prior studies to determine their design properties. A mobile AR application called CorfuAR implements Layar, an AR browser app, by following the design principles of the reviewed AR applications. The authors argued that the proposed design principles contributed to the mobile AR application’s high usability and performance, leading to better user–system interaction. A follow-up study by the same authors (Kourouthanassis et al. 2015a ) confirmed that the functional properties of the application stimulate a feeling of pleasure, which leads to an increase in the intention to use the application. Siang et al. ( 2016 ) designed both the iMelaka 360 website and the iMelaka AR app to help tourists explore Melaka, Malaysia. Abidin et al. ( 2018 ) suggested an adaptive user interface for a location-based AR system to improve the tourist experience and ease access to Islamic tourism information, specifically in Malaysia.

4.2.6 Immersive technology adoption for other purposes

Another use of immersive technology in tourism was entertainment and accessibility support. A study by Shang et al. ( 2016 ) focused on using AR for post-visits. The mobile AR system used a postcard as a tourist souvenir to provide more information regarding the tourist destination that the user recently visited. Wu et al. ( 2020 ) investigated users’ behavioural intentions related to AR as part of the Avengers League World Tour exhibition in Taiwan. The users experienced the action from the point of view of the hero character.

Despite immersive technology offering many benefits to tourism, little research exists on immersive technology for disabled people. One design study by Baker et al. ( 2020 ) developed an AR tourism prototype for hard-of-hearing visitors. It is based on five conceptual elements: aesthetics, usability, interaction, motivation, and satisfaction. In a follow-up study, Baker et al. ( 2020 ) evaluated the prototype using groups of hard-of-hearing instructors, museum employees and experts. The prototype evaluation covered the interface, multimedia and interactivity.

4.3 The potential challenge in using immersive technology in tourism (RQ3: what are the potential challenges of developing immersive technology for the tourism domain?)

While immersive technology shows significant potential use in tourism, it also has several challenges (see Fig.  5 ). This section discusses the challenges identified in the selected articles.

Challenges in immersive technology for tourism

First, a lack of interoperability exists across device platforms (Kounavis et al. 2012 ). AR cannot be used across all the operating systems, albeit there are many frameworks and toolkits to develop the AR application. Second, some AR applications require an Internet connection to retrieve data from the server (Kasinathan et al. 2017 ). Some tourists consider mobile Internet expensive, and not all tourism areas or cities provide free Internet access (Kounavis et al. 2012 ; tom Dieck et al. 2018b ). The third challenge lies in the physical size of the AR devices. Participants in a study by Chang et al. ( 2014 ) complained about the thick, heavy tablet PC used for painting appreciation. They indicated that a smaller device, like a smartphone, would be more suitable to carry as a tour guide device. In other studies, the drawbacks of tour guides using wearable devices were battery life (tom Dieck et al. 2016 ) and the device cost (Hammady et al. 2020 ).

The fourth challenge is the AR tracking ability when using a camera as a sensor. Camera-tracking AR, whether markerless or marker-based, should consider the amount of light and at what angle the camera faces the marker, picture or object. System responses, or feedback, are the fifth challenge of AR. The system should notify users of feedback errors to indicate the system’s process (Kourouthanassis et al. 2015b ) and create personalised navigation (tom Dieck et al. 2016 ). The fifth challenge is feedback from the AR system. Real-time feedback from AR systems influenced user-system interaction. Users might experience a lower attitude toward using the system if they feel uncertain due to no response from the system (Kourouthanassis et al. 2015a ). Participants in a study by tom Dieck et al. ( 2016 ) concerned about crashing and inadequate response from the system. System designers might need to minimize the possibility of system feedback issues to ensure users feel a smooth experience while using the AR system. The sixth challenge is the application layout. The layout of the annotation system influences the user’s perception of the observed area (Yovcheva et al. 2014 ). One participant in a study by Mason ( 2016 ) argued that it would be preferable for information to be shown via smart glasses rather than a mobile device screen. The seventh challenge identified in AR for tourism is the user’s engagement with the real object or surroundings. In an experimental design study by tom Dieck et al. ( 2018a ), participants experienced a new AR technology that caused them to focus more on the device’s information than the paintings they were observing. This means that the application designer should ensure that the information projected at a specific time is not overloaded and thus does not distract from the leisure experience (Han et al. 2019a ). Finally, user privacy is another concern regarding the use of AR in tourism. The benefit of content personalisation or a context-aware system delivers more related content to the user. However, if the system increasingly requests more personal details about the user, the risk of this data being lost or misused increases.

The challenges posed by VR in tourism are different from those posed by AR. The first challenge of using VR for tourism is device familiarisation. Puig et al. ( 2020 ) argued that familiarising the user with VR devices could be time-consuming. Further, the authors proposed combining the essentials of VR environment design with natural hand–gesture interaction that offers sufficient time flexibility to obtain information. The second challenge lies in the relationship between physical information from the real tourism destination and the virtual information in the VR environment. Puig et al. ( 2020 ) claimed that using information gained from the physical environment should help the user further explore information in a VR environment. Equally, the information from the virtual environment could help users learn about related tourism objects or situations. The third challenge of using VR for tourism is data availability. When presenting a virtual object, environment or scenario from the past, making the image presented in VR as realistic as possible relies on data availability.

5 Conclusions and implications

This review builds on knowledge from existing reviews (Baker et al. 2017 ; Beck et al. 2019 ; Wei 2019 ; Yung and Khoo-Lattimore 2019 ). Findings from another study by Baker et al. ( 2017 ) revealed 11 major elements that need to be considered when designing mobile AR systems for hard-of-hearing individuals. Consideration of those elements could increase user engagement with AR applications in tourism. Findings from another VR-related review study (Beck et al. 2019 ) addressed that VR in tourism can be classified by its immersion level: non-immersive, semi-immersive or fully immersive. The major finding from Wei ( 2019 ) identified major constructs from prior studies and categorised them using the stimuli–dimensions–consequences framework. The framework synthesises key constructs associated with AR and VR in tourism and hospitality. Yung and Khoo-Lattimore ( 2019 ) explored AR and VR usage in the tourism sub-sector and revealed the methodology and theory implemented in prior studies on AR and VR in tourism. Based on the existing review findings, the present study’s findings extend the knowledge on AR/VR usage in tourism. We have identified AR and VR as the immersive technology used in the selected research articles.

The following section elaborates on the potential future research on immersive technology in tourism and recommendations for stakeholders. This section also includes identified limitations of this study that might need improvement in future studies.

5.1 Limitations of the study

Although this review provides detail on immersive technology research in tourism, some limitations would be helpful to consider during future research. First, we found that some articles related to tourist attractions such as cultural heritage and museums did not appear in the search results. Future research might include specific tourism attractions as keywords in the search query. Second, our inclusion was limited to peer-reviewed journal articles. Our findings indicate increasing immersive technology adoption in tourism-related articles. Based on that trend, it could help to expand the findings by including conference proceedings that, to avoid duplication, are not extended to journal articles. Third, immersive technology in tourism indicates an increased number of published articles in line with time. However, the lack of technology adoption by the tourism providers either due to cost or lack of understanding remains unclear. Further study might focus on the challenge of adopting the technology.

Finally, the oldest article included in this review was published in 2012. Current technology has made substantial advances since then, and the potential challenges in technology adoption in tourism might have evolved too over time. For example, AR technology is more mature, with state-of-the-art mobile devices and AR integration with light detection and ranging (LiDAR). Recent VR technology can also deliver high-quality images with recent computation. For further reviews, we suggest that this may be a justification to adopt shorter review windows, for example of 5 years.

5.2 Future works

5.2.1 integrating immersive technology with other technology to enhance the user experience.

This review identified the types of immersive technology used in tourism articles. We observed that only AR and VR appeared in prior studies. Therefore, several potential directions for future research could implement another type of immersive technology under the MR umbrella and another technology integration. AR systems are used dominantly in mobile devices using a trigger to initiate the digital content on the screen, overlaying the real-world view. Modern smart devices are powered with high system specifications that quickly load the AR application. One direction for future research could be to use AR with LiDAR to detect the user’s environment. Using that technique, AR could help promote the tourism destination (Lee et al. 2017 ; Lin and Chen 2017 ) or enhance the user experience during visitation (Rodrigues et al. 2019 ; Yoon et al. 2018 ; Nisi et al. 2018 ). Likewise, another direction for future research with AR could be to use a wearable device to measure visitor responses to an enhanced experience during visitation (Hammady et al. 2020 ; Han et al. 2019a ; Tussyadiah et al. 2018a ). Although AR with wearable devices such as Google Glass and HoloLens is still considered expensive, its usage can deliver a seamless experience without requiring the user to hold the device. A third direction for future research could be to assess visitor responses on a multi-trigger AR system to improve the destination exploration experience using marker and location sensors.

Traditionally, VR visualises a virtual environment fully generated by a computer. The popularity of 360° technology in line with various HMD availability opens the opportunity for tourism providers to create a VR experience using a 360° camera without high-level programming knowledge. The following research agenda could be used to investigate the difference between using a computer modelling VR content and a 360° image or video for different situations, such as pre-visit or promotion, during visitation and post-visitation.

5.2.2 Immersive technology applications within the tourism area

Immersive technology has various uses in tourism. We found that AR is used primarily for tour guidance and navigation, and VR is mainly used to promote tourism destinations. One possible future research direction is to examine AR usage, especially personalisation based on visitor age, to enhance the learning experience during visitation (tom Dieck et al. 2018b ; Yoon et al. 2018 ).

A potential direction for future VR-related research is to assess whether the developed application reflects the expected specific environment, such as VR content that gives the user the sensation that they are experiencing a situation in the past (Puig et al. 2020 ; Errichiello et al. 2019 ). Another potential research agenda focuses on cultural heritage since VR can preserve heritage objects or situations and represent them using digital objects. It could also be interesting to explore immersive technology in areas other than those identified in this study, such as VR applications to support accessibility for disabled people and its potential to replace actual visitation due to physical restrictions.

5.2.3 Potential challenge in using immersive technology in tourism

The selected articles indicate several potential challenges of using immersive technology in tourism. They can give tourism stakeholders, primarily application developers, insight into designing a suitable system to meet users’ needs. Some challenges can be solved using current technology. For example, the interoperability issue (Kounavis et al. 2012 ) can be solved by developing the AR application using Unity (Unity Technologies 2020). Tracking issues that occur while detecting markers (Nisi et al. 2018 ) can be handled by using smartphones with an up-to-date camera sensor and using a new technique for spatial markings, such as LiDAR. Another challenge we found is that users feel disconnected from the real object while using the AR application. Application developers must consider the balance of interactivity between exploring the actual object and using the application. Tourism providers can also support the user’s experience by designing an interactive and attractive display presentation. Future research might focus on the design aspect of immersive technology for tourism and its evaluation. Exploring the impact of content-aware immersive technology on providing information based on the user’s characteristics would also be interesting.

5.3 Recommendations for stakeholders

5.3.1 recommendations for the system developer.

Our research shows that most AR applications use one trigger type to initiate the virtual object. As the user moves around the destination, the application is expected to recognise the user’s preference and recommend the next object that they need to explore. This can be achieved using traditional triggers such as a camera and a location sensor to detect the user’s position. In addition, the user experience can be assessed to improve the application and learn visitor preference. We also found that the visitor may engage with the AR application more than the real object or environment itself. Therefore, the AR application developer might consider designing an interactive application that will let the visitor examine the real object with additional information from the application.

5.3.2 Recommendations for tourism providers

Our research shows that AR is mainly used during actual visitation at the tourism destination. AR can enhance the user experience while the user is exploring the destination. Therefore, it might be helpful for the tourism provider to consider the layout of the destination to ensure that it supports the AR application usage. Infrastructure such as Internet connection, room layout, and booth layout can be developed to achieve this. Users might immerse themselves in the environment with the addition of AR applications and thus focus not only focus on the virtual object that appears on the device screen but also on any objects in the real environment.

To reiterate, we found that VR is mainly used to promote tourism. Undoubtedly, VR is gaining recognition as a solution simulating a realistic environment. Thus, our recommendation for tourism providers is to introduce the destination via VR through a travel agent (Bush 2022 ), meaning that potential visitors can experience the destination before deciding on travel. An alternative is to integrate VR with the destination’s website to help website users gain more information regarding the tourism destination. Another recommendation is to integrate VR with other applications, such as the Conqueror (Home Run Limited 2021 ), a virtual travel application that gained popularity during travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The application provides many virtual challenges to complete at well-known destinations worldwide. When users join a challenge, they can gain the distance they achieved through their daily exercise such as running, walking or cycling, which translates to distance travelled. The tracked distance can be synchronised with the Conqueror application to travel virtually to the selected destination challenge. Users can explore the route along the virtual trip. Tourism providers can integrate VR about their destinations with the application to enable users to have a VR experience of the promoted destination.

Tourism providers should consider VR adoption since it brings benefits as a virtual tour for users and them. Users may use virtual tours for cost-effectiveness, health safety and time-saving. Specific users such as the elderly or those with physical disabilities would feel safer, secure, and require no special equipment to enjoy the virtual trip (Scott 2020 ). As for tourism providers, VR adoption creates employment opportunities for content creators, videographers and tour guides (Scott 2020 ). Further, VR can be programable (Sussmann and Vanhegan 2000 ) to keep the content and information up-to-date.

6 Conclusion

This review explored the use of immersive technology in the context of tourism through a comprehensive review of 88 articles published between 2012 and 2020. The increasing number of journal articles published in this field reflects the research interest in immersive technology for tourism, primarily in AR. This work advances prior works and reviews through several contributions. We have identified AR and VR combined with other technology can offer potential user experience enhancement. We have also identified immersive technology usage within the tourism sub-sector and potential challenges of using immersive technologies. This review paper generates an overview that both academic and tourism stakeholders can use to understand better the current progress and possible research directions on immersive technology in tourism. Immersive technology, such as AR and VR, has numerous real-world applications and the potential to spark new interest and uptake of travel destinations which have been lagging in recent years. It is hoped that this review stimulates further research both in applying this technology to novel contexts and taking advantage of cutting-edge VR technology which has become increasingly available in the consumer space.

Data availability

We do not analyse or generate any datasets, because our work proceeds within a theoretical approach.

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The content of this paper is part of doctoral thesis of the first author. The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and Sebelas Maret University in supporting this research.

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Eko Harry Pratisto: Conceptualization-idea; Literature search; Data analysis; Writing-original draft; Writing—review and editing. Nik Thompson: Supervision; Writing—review and editing. Vidyasagar Potdar: Supervision; Writing—review and editing.

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Pratisto, E.H., Thompson, N. & Potdar, V. Immersive technologies for tourism: a systematic review. Inf Technol Tourism 24 , 181–219 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-022-00228-7

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-022-00228-7

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Warmer Temperatures Affect Ski Tourism Across the Globe

Published: 4/11/2024 10:00:54 AM

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This year's mild winter has significantly impacted Europe's ski resorts, where declining snow cover due to climate change is disrupting operations. A recent research paper in a leading environmental science journal revealed that without snowmaking,  53% of Europe’s ski resorts would be at very high risk for insufficient snow supply under a 2°C global warming scenario , which jumps to 98% at 4°C warming. Even with snowmaking covering 50% of their pistes , 27% would still be at high risk under a 2°C increase and 71% at 4°C. This highlights the profound threat climate change poses to the ski tourism industry, crucial for the economies of many of Europe's mountain regions .

In America, the story is similar. The climate continues to warm, making winters more unpredictable and shorter and posing a threat to ski resorts that rely on consistent snowfall. Climate change scenarios predict a significant reduction in days suitable for snowfall across top ski towns . For instance, Truckee, California , is projected to lose up to 80% of its sub-freezing days by the end of the century under a high emissions scenario. This represents a stark decline in the historical conditions necessary for natural snowfall, challenging the viability of ski resorts and their contribution to local economies. In turn, the economic repercussions are grave. For instance, in Tahoe, a bad snow season led to a 42% decrease in business for one local store, indicative of the broader financial impact on communities reliant on winter sports tourism. Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit organization, released a report indicating that in low snow years, the industry sees a decrease in economic value of $1 billion and a loss of 17,400 jobs compared to average snow years. This variability in snowfall, and therefore ski visits, underscores the vulnerability of the snow sports industry to climate fluctuations .

Deepening the discussion on the impacts of mild winters, experts consider the broader environmental and ecological consequences beyond the economic downturns. The scarcity of snow not only disrupts winter sports, but also affects water resources critical for drinking, agriculture, and natural ecosystems. Regions accustomed to snowfall rely on the gradual melt to replenish rivers and reservoirs, a cycle increasingly threatened by climate change . To adapt to these changes, some ski resorts and communities are exploring innovative measures. Beyond enhancing snowmaking capabilities, there's a shift towards diversifying winter tourism offerings. Alternative activities such as winter hiking and cultural events are being promoted to attract tourists and sustain local economies year-round, demonstrating a proactive approach to the challenges posed by changing winter landscapes . 

The call for comprehensive climate action is only  growing . Mitigating the effects of climate change and securing a sustainable future for winter sports and local economies requires global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy . The ski industry, alongside communities and policymakers, is pivotal in advocating for and adopting sustainable practices that safeguard our winters for future generations . 

The cultural significance of winter sports extends beyond mere recreation, embodying traditions and community bonds that have developed over generations. The potential loss of these traditions due to climate change not only threatens local economies but also erodes cultural heritage, emphasizing the need for sustainable solutions . In terms of environmental initiatives, many ski resorts are now prioritizing sustainability by adopting renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and engaging in conservation efforts. These actions reflect a growing recognition within the industry of the need to operate in an environmentally responsible manner to ensure long-term sustainability . Education and awareness play a pivotal role in driving climate action. Organizations like Protect Our Winters leverage the influence of athletes and public figures to mobilize communities and policymakers toward reducing carbon footprints and advocating for climate policies. Their work highlights the importance of collective action in addressing the challenges posed by climate change .

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