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Digital Travel – A Study of Travellers’ Views of a Digital Visit to Mexico

2023; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-33258-6_17

2367-3370

Ingvar Tjøstheim, John Waterworth,

Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management

In this study, we invited members of a Norwegian national survey-panel to give their views on digital travel applications and digital travel experiences, and to consider Mexico as a travel destination. We presented vacationers with descriptions of digital travel products and activities, and a video about Mexico made from the game Horizon Forza 5. We used Partial Least Square—Structural Equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse whether digital presentations, sense of place, and travel motivation could predict intention to visit Mexico. The analysis showed that vicarious sense of place was the best predictor of future intentions. As the study is based on survey data from a national population, a reasonable degree of generalisability, at least for Norway and other Scandinavian countries, is to be expected. It shows that there is a small but emergent market for digital travel and virtual tourism. More importantly, the study indicates that a digital experience in a virtual environment—specifically, that of a vicarious sense of place—can stimulate and motivate vacationers to travel to a tourist destination and hence that there are opportunities which businesses in the travel economy can potentially utilize.