COVID-19 resilience via digital cultural heritage; digital life in museums and festivals during the anthropause

The imposition of the lockdown anthropause massively affected tourism and particularly cultural tourism products. Digital cultural heritage served as a first aid kit amidst COVID-19 reshaping the deliverable experience. Nevertheless, the pandemic created new research streams; no study so far has reviewed digital resilience within museums and festivals. Drawing on a review of 75 papers, and multiple case study analyses, this paper presents three major streams revealing opportunities and problems attendant to social media and digital transformation as the modus operandi during the lockdown, and global best practices of museum and festival reactions including Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Momus. This study views COVID-19 as a disruptive event inaugurating a brand-new digital experience era. The study serves as a valuable classification and theoretical starting point for researchers and, second, as a roadmap for challenges and future research agenda directions of digital museum/festival experience amid digital transformation in the post-pandemic era. Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; social media; AR/VR; museums; festivals; digital transformation; cultural tourism; cultural heritage; resilienc