VIRTUAL REALITY AND BLOGGING IN TOURISM: APPROACHED TOWARDS CREATING BETTER TOURIST EXPERIENCE

Virtual reality in tourism (virtual tourism) and blogging are highly valuable for visitors and travellers since they allow them to undertake a scouting trip before embarking on their adventure, avoid being hassled and avoid crowds while learning more about the location they are visiting or have already been. This paper provides an overview and analysis of the relationship between virtual tourism, blogging, and making the image of tourist destinations through promotion virtually and via blogs. According to the study\u27s findings, virtual tourism cannot replace the actual experience, but it can assist in recreating it if the user has previously visited the location, bringing out new nuances in their experience, or giving them a taste of the destination ahead of time if they have not yet visited. Also, when it comes to digital marketing for tourism, blogging is the frosting on the cake because it is utilized for promotion and communication throughout the pre-travel period, focusing on behavioural factors

Analysing recent augmented and virtual reality developments in tourism

Purpose Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two technological breakthroughs that stimulate reality perception. Both have been applied in tourism contexts to improve tourists’ experience. This paper aims to frame both AR and VR developments during the past 15 years from a scientific perspective. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a text mining and topic modelling approach to analyse a total of 1,049 articles for VR and 406 for AR. The papers were selected from Scopus, with the title, abstract and keywords being extracted for the analysis. Formulated research hypotheses based on relevant publications are then evaluated to assess the current state of the broader scope of the large sets of literature. Findings Most of research using AR is based on mobile technology. Yet, wearable devices still show few publications, a gap that is expected to close in the near future. There is a lack of research adopting Big Data/machine learning approaches based on secondary data. Originality/value As both AR and VR technologies are becoming more mature, more applications to tourism emerge. Scholars need to keep pace and fill in the research gaps on both domains to move research forward.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research

To Study the Impact of Virtual Reality (VR) on Online Accommodation Booking Platforms (OABP) in order to Improve the Overall Customer Experience.

Nowadays, the reservation of accommodation such as hotels and B&Bs can be made via online booking platform. The online accommodation booking platform (OABP) is gaining popularity since it provides functionality and convenience to the customer. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology in the tourism and hospitality industries, but there is a lack of research into this era such as the effects of VR as a room display tool on OABP. This dissertation investigated the motivation of customers to use 3D VR room tour on OABP and explored the process that VR improves the customer online booking experience and gain the customer confidence in the OABP. Lastly, compare the efficiency between VR and the normal online booking experience of the customer. The current research adopted the extended Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) conceptual framework of the decision�making process to evaluate the VR system implements on OABP. In order to offer a better understanding of the research objectives, this research employed the semi-structured interview and qualitative approach to collect the in-depth opinion of the participants. The interview consisted of eleven participants and separated into two groups in the different perspective section which are OABP customers (guests) and professionals (host/hotelier) The result of this research discussed the issue of inaccurate accommodation room view and the anxiety derived from the unknown accommodation as the reasons for customers to use 3D VR room tour. Therefore, the affective response and cognitive response of customers stimulated by the authentic experience of VR reinforced their trust and confidence to the website then improved their visit intention and purchase decision of the accommodations.However, due to a lack of study regarding using VR on the booking website, and also 3D VR room tour not as a frequent room display tool on OABP, there was still some limitation of sample size in analysing the similarities and differences between the participants

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research

Determinants of continuance intention and word of mouth for hotel branded mobile app users.

This study examined the cognitive and affective factors that influence users\u27 post-adoption behavioral intention. Specifically, based on the Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) (Bhattacherjee, 2001b) the impact of cognitive factors (i.e., perceived usefulness, confirmation of expectations, mobility, personalization and responsiveness) and affective factors (i.e., satisfaction, perceived enjoyment) on hotel branded mobile applications (apps) users\u27 continuance intention and WOM were examined. Hospitality firms invest considerable resources on technology solutions that are aimed at improving the consumer experience. However, for investments to be profitable firms must ensure that technology solutions are continuously used and ensure post-adoptive behaviors such as continuance intention and WOM. Data for the study were collected from 550 hotel branded mobile app users. After data were collected and cleaned, Partial Least-Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results of the structural model indicated that continuance intention and WOM were directly influenced by satisfaction and perceived enjoyment; with satisfaction exerting the most influence on continuance intention. Conversely, perceived enjoyment was most influential to WOM. All cognitive factors were found to influence satisfaction and enjoyment, except for responsiveness and perceived usefulness. The results show that contextual factors have a more significant impact than previously established constructs. The results of the study allow hoteliers and hospitality technology consultants to identify the influential factors impacting post-adoptive behaviors. The study extends the literature on post-adoptive behavior and the ECM by including context specific factors (i.e. perceived mobility, personalization and responsiveness). This study contributes to the scare literature in the lodging industry literature examining users\u27 evaluations of mobile apps and post-adoptive behaviors in the hospitality industry. The study adds to the post-adoptive behavior literature by adding WOM as a second outcome to continuance intention. The treatment of contextual factors in this study, allowed to show the impact technology characteristics have on technology post-adoption

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Metaverse beyond the hype: Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy

The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively impact people in their work, leisure, and social interaction. The potential impact on the way we conduct business, interact with brands and others, and develop shared experiences is likely to be transformational as the distinct lines between physical and digital are likely to be somewhat blurred from current perceptions. However, although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people. This study examines these topics in detail by combining the informed narrative and multi-perspective approach from experts with varied disciplinary backgrounds on many aspects of the metaverse and its transformational impact. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda that is valuable for researchers, professionals and policy makers alike

The role of object in service design

For successful service design, how to utilize users’ insight, knowledge and experiences are core factor to consider. How to facilitate the users’ value creation by providing and delivering resources and processes through interactions between service and user is also another key factor. Designers focus on designing the interactions- touchpoints/evidences- as important part of their work. Through the service design processes of exploration and creation, the designers design a physical-, visual- or virtual- object to facilitate users’ service experience. However, the research of the designed object is limited only on their importance or a certain case. This study seeks different roles of the designed object in service design through case studies, which collected from three years of TOUCHPOINT- service design journals. Thematic analysis and affinity diagram tool were conducted to analyze collected data and categorize found different roles. The study addresses five roles of the object: Empowering, Emotion, Enriching, Education, Enhanc-ing. Designed objects empower users and their rights, deliver certain emotion or solve emotional problems, enrich users’ lives by providing opportunities for users to interact others, deliver knowledge and share information and provide communication channels, and finally enhance service performance. Furthermore an object sometimes takes multiples roles or changes its role to another. Designers bodily know how to utilize unique feature of the object in designing services. Some of objects enable co-creation and on-going service changes. The object and service element supports each other. The study suggests that understanding the role of object in service design reinforces ser-vice designers’ competence in shaping users’ service experience

DIGITALISATION AND NEW TRENDS IN TRAVEL DISTRIBUTION

This paper seek to understand the role of new technologies on transformation processes of special areas of business of travel intermediaries even emerging new entities that collaborate with both poles of tourism demand. Special attention is payed to results of modification of distribution channels to be competitive in online travel market. Softwer as channel manager is more than a tool, it is emerging as core intelligence that manage time, impacting on benefits from converegence. New technologies allowed new digital platforms (Booking, Airbnb, Expedia) making travel easier. The preferences of the postmodern tourist extend beyond the streamlined and impersonal experiences, services and products. Driven by the ambition of deviating from the beaten track, new generations of travellers are converging on digital platforms to retrieve recommendations and information from fellow travellers and local residents,i.e. sources other than traditional travel intermediaries. The COVID crisis has triggered a number of changes in the world of rental accommodation. Some of these changes are flexible cancellations, new market prices, and shorter booking window. High expections make preassure on attnders in channel of distribution. There is an even greater emphasis on cleanliness, privacy and security. At the end of the research, the results speak in favor of exceptional impact of new technology on business development as well as the role that human potential has in acquiring digital skills through education and training and providing their own tools or products that facilitate business. This paper consider sociological, economic and cultural dimension that impact on behavior of users of digital platforms are formulated to support previously incompatible ideas, like (1) models of economic systems, relationships); cultural and moral perspectives on human coexistence (negotiation, lifestyle, stewardship, prosocial behaviour/altruism, collaborative symbiosis and; ideas of efficiency and enhanced value creation