Cultural Tourism Destinations and the Power of Virtual Reality

The immersion properties of digital culture and its all-engulfing effects have been repeatedly underlined in the literature (see Polimeris & Calfoglou, Art in the globalised era: A disembodied journey with traces in the past. In V. Katsoni, (Ed.), Cultural Tourism in a Digital Era. First International Conference Iacudit Athens, 2014 (pp. 59–79). Heidelberg: Springer for an overview, 2015a). The way these properties interfere with the subject’s perception of space and time has also been considered. This paper attempts to shed some further light on the potency of the digital medium and, more specifically, of virtual reality, by conducting a small-scale research, comparing the effects of diverse modes of presentation of the cultural tourism product on respondents’ choice of a cultural tourism destination. In other words, it explores the presentation mode as a motivation force underlying people’s statement of preferences (cf. Powell & Kokkranikal, Motivations and experiences of museum visitors: The case of the Imperial War Museum, United Kingdom. V. Katsoni (Ed.) Cultural tourism in a digital era. First International Conference Iacudit Athens, 2014 (pp. 169–181). Heidelberg: Springer, 2015). The powerfulness of this force is tested against variables such as the type of destination, destination popularity and respondents’ cultural background. The power of the virtual is once more established and any correlation with the destination’s popularity, its ‘aura’, as well as with respondents’ cultural background is explored. The results are discussed in light of virtual reality discourse as dominant, an instrument and a product of power (Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1969; Foucault Power/knowledge. In C. Gordon (Ed.), London: Harvester, 1980), its non-linear organizational principles and its affective dimensions (Massumi, Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). While these results can be made to inform cultural tourism programmes quite fruitfully, the question is posed of whether the virtual may eventually override the in situ experience.