From real to virtual: nature tourism insights

ABSTRACT

There is a fruitful ground for technologies such as augmented and virtual reality to be adopted by the service industry in order to further develop and enhance the unique experience of consumers. The tourism industry (with special reference to nature tourism) is one of the sectors that can very well evolve such technologies in their products and services. Such adoption will increase the engagement towards the destinations and the enterprises. In parallel such technologies can further increase the competitiveness and product and service quality. However, despite the substantial amount of beneficial impacts of such technological adoption, there is a lack of applications specialised in nature tourism. This article provides specific examples and practices suggesting the application of Virtual and Augmented Realities to nature tourism. The study also progresses to the provision of conceptual evidence in order to empower the extended technologies to nature tourism, whilst reducing the hesitance of technological adaptation.

KEYWORDS:

• Augmented reality
• virtual reality
• mixed reality
• nature tourism
• marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Christina Karadimitriou is a Masters (MSc) student at the University of Aegean, Chios, Greece. She is currently PR Manager at Virtual Reality Applications (ViRA) enterprise, Athens, Greece. Her research interests include crisis management communications, event marketing, and disability tourism.