Virtual Reality: A Simple Substitute or New Niche?

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Abstract Since 2020, the tourism industry worldwide has been devastated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments across the globe imposed strict national lockdowns in order to curb the spread of the pandemic, with negative effects on tourism. This forced many tourism companies and organizations to turn to virtual reality (VR) to survive. As a consequence, numerous tourism scholars began to question whether VR would replace conventional tourism after COVID-19. The study aims is to address this concern and to determine if VR will be a substitute for conventional tourism or whether it can be considered as a tourism niche. It is a conceptional study which adopts a comparative analysis of conventional tourism models and VR. It uses two popular conventional tourism models, namely N. Leiper’s (1979) tourism system model and R.W. Butler’s (1980) destination life-cycle model. Based on this analysis, this paper suggests that VR will never be a substitute for conventional tourism, but should rather be considered a future tourism niche.

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