Cultural-Heritage Virtual Tour for Tourism Recovery Post COVID-19: A Design and Evaluation

Abstract

In tourism, virtual tours are one of the latest promotional trends utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in keeping potential tourists saturated and interested in visiting the tourist attractions when the 'new normal' conditions become stable. Furthermore, virtual tours are also a part of historical conservation for cultural-heritage tourism. This research aims to design a virtual cultural-heritage tour route in the Kesawan area of Medan city, make widely promoted virtual tour videos, and evaluate the quality of virtual tourism by arousing interest in prospective tourists to visit the cultural-heritage area of Medan city. Descriptive qualitative design and quantitative regression methods are adopted in this research. Qualitative descriptive and qualitative methods were used to explain the trips and measure the impact of virtual tours in the city of Medan, especially the Kesawan district as the research area. The first result showed the design of a virtual tour starting from the itinerary planning process, taking pictures, editing, and publishing on YouTube media. It was also observed that the published cultural-heritage attracts potential travelers to visit and physically experience the tourist attractions. Moreover, the virtual tour design will be enriched with the addition of English subtitles to obtain a larger audience.