Enhancing Tourism Destination Accessibility in Developing Countries through Virtual Worlds

TL;DR

This paper explores how virtual worlds can improve accessibility to tourism destinations in developing countries, aiming to boost sustainable tourism growth and destination utilization.

Contribution

It proposes a virtual world model with visual and auditory features to enhance destination accessibility for diverse tourists in emerging regions.

Findings

Content analysis of Second Life tourism groups and places.

Outline of a virtual world model to increase destination accessibility.

Potential for virtual environments to support sustainable tourism development.

Abstract

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.