Qualitative analysis of virtual reality adoption by tourism operators in low-density regions

Virtual reality technologies have grown in complexity and functionality, increasing their relevance in various sectors of activity. Applying these innovations to tourism is advantageous for the organisations, the tourists and even the territories. They can provide multisensory immersivity, simulate actions and movements in real-time, enriching reality using interactive virtual objects. Thus, captivating visitors and showing territories from richer and livelier perspectives. This study describes a review of the adoption of virtual reality technology at the organisational level. In order to adapt the literature review to the tourism topic, the process of analysis of the literature was carried out with a constant concern to analyse research that studied the topic. Assuming the need to further develop the work done and to obtain a confirmation on the contribution resulting from the bibliographic review, a focus group was developed, which allowed several specialists to discuss collaboratively and interactively the research project topics without having to be in face-to-face contact. The results of this study allow not only to acknowledge the relevance of virtual reality for tourism but also to understand how the existing literature and experts are aligned with the identification of opportunities for disruptive development of solutions that trigger tourism destinations and organisational development.This work was financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation – COMPETE 2020 Programme and by the National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031309 titled ‘PromoTourVR – Promoting Tourism Destinations with Multisensory Immersive Media.