The impact of virtual reality technology on tourists’ experience: a textual data analysis

Abstract

This paper is focused on the study of the quality of experience lived by tourists when visiting a cultural heritage destination by using a tourist product based on a virtual tour. The research is justified by the increased demand by tourists to have a memorable experience in a destination as well as the growing offer on virtual reality and augmented reality technologies applied to the tourism sector. The database consists of online comments extracted from those who visited two well-known tourism destinations in Spain, Seville and Barcelona, where the immersive virtual reality technology named Past View is currently used. A total of 119 online comments on the tourists’ experience after the use of the Past View smart glasses and posted in the e-WOM community Trip Advisor were valid for the analysis. Using a correspondence analysis of textual data, the results shed light about how virtual reality technologies influence on tourists’ quality of experience. The findings drawn from the empirical analysis provide destination marketing organizations suitable and useful information to promote the destination and therefore encouraging entrepreneurs to innovate in tourism sector to attend the desire of tourists to have a memorable tourist experience.