Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality of Tourism Research: A Review and Research Agenda

This study aims to present a critical literature review on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in tourism and hospitality research and propose future research areas. A systematic review with bibliometric analysis using the software VOSviewer on 204 articles from 1995 to 2022 of a Scopus database. Four emerging research areas are discovered: (1) VR tourism marketing; (2) AR applications in heritage (3) VR consumption behavior after the pandemic and (4) tourist experience. Researcher collaborations occur mostly in the same institution and country. Future research directions are theoretical development, qualitative study method, cross-cultural studies and hospitality. This project extends the previous reviews by proposing a future research framework. Future research directions include role of presence between media richness & interactivity and consumer responses; VR and AR values from Chinese and United Sates customers; and how VR commercials generate a higher level of vividness and interactivity among customers. This study provides an updated version of the bibliometric visualization of VR/AR in tourism research. It shows how to capture distinct clusters on existing research areas using keywords co-occurrence, collaboration patterns using co-authorship analysis, and bibliographic coupling. New frameworks on the topic are proposed.