Towards a typology of virtual tourists: Efficacy of visual patterns and attentional cues

Abstract

Virtual tourism is rapidly emerging in prominence in contemporary tourism research. Previous studies tend to consider the virtual tourism population as a homogeneous entity, resulting in unintended consequences. Despite the ocular-centric nature within virtual environments, existing eye tracking studies have rarely classified virtual tourists into benefit-based segments, discounting the critical role of pre-existing visual patterns and associated attentional cues. Subsequently, this research constructs a theoretically rigorous and evidence-informed typology of virtual tourists, based on attention patterns discerned from eye tracking trajectory and associated visual cues, triangulated with interview data. Building on the theory of bottom-up and top-down attentional processing, four discrete virtual tourist typologies emerged in terms of visual completeness and visual cognition: visual passives, curious scanners, focused observers, and comprehensive engagers. The visual and cognitive characteristics among the groups were collated, revealing significant differences articulated between each of the virtual tourist typologies. This research not only advances knowledge through a renewed emphasis on typology-driven theorising within the virtual tourism population, but also offers practical insights into implementing an innovative and effective segmentation approach. Future research should consider comparing the theoretical and empirical specifications of the virtual tourist typology.