Identifying the Main Service Elements for Customer-Oriented Live Guided Virtual Tours

Rosa Repo and Juho Pesonen ()
Additional contact information
Rosa Repo: University of Eastern Finland
Juho Pesonen: University of Eastern Finland

A chapter in Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022, 2022, pp 213-225 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Virtual tourism allows people to see and experience the world without physically travelling to the destination. The objective of this study is to identify service elements critical to the development of customer-oriented live guided virtual tours. A total of three focus group discussions were conducted, with 4–5 participants in each group. All the participants were Japanese who had previously participated in live guided virtual tours. The data was analysed with qualitative content analysis, where an inductive approach was used. The findings reveal that the main expectations of the participants are related to experiencing the local culture and way of life, feeling of actually being in the destination (sense of connection), social interaction and active participation. These factors make the virtual tour feel realistic and attractive and the tourism businesses need especially to focus on these when designing virtual tours for example by providing ample opportunities for the virtual tour participants to discuss with each other and learn from each other. This study brings valuable insights into the virtual tours research from the customer perspective, especially in a non-Western context.

Keywords: Tourist experience; Virtual reality; Guided tour; Experience design; Content analysis; Virtual tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-94751-4_19

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030947514

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-94751-4_19

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().