Enhancing Tourism Destination Accessibility in Developing Countries through Virtual Worlds
It tackles destination accessibility issues for tourism industries in emerging regions, but appears incremental as it builds on existing virtual world concepts without introducing a new paradigm.
This research addresses the problem of underutilized tourism destinations in developing countries by proposing a virtual world model to enhance accessibility, aiming to support sustainable tourism development through improved pre-purchase and consumption experiences.
The problem of destination accessibility is a vital concern in the sustainable tourism development in the emerging regions due to the increasing numbers of tourism business growth in the recent times. Tourism is one of the potential foreign exchange earning sectors, which place sustainability as one of the main success metrics for benchmarking the overall development of the industry. On the other hand, there are several destinations, which are inaccessible to tourists due to several reasons. Underutilization of potential destinations in both pre purchase and consumption stages is a strategic disadvantage for emerging countries on leading their tourism industry towards sustainability. This research embarks on a content analysis of second life based tourism groups and places. Requirement of a virtual world model to increase the destination accessibility of tourism products has been outlined. The model has to be designed with visual and auditory experience to tourists. The model is expected to enhance the accessibility of destinations for users of different categories.