Can Virtual Reality be used to create memorable tourist experiences to influence the future intentions of wine tourists?

Resumo

Tourism business models have used several technologies in their development, such as Virtual Reality (VR). Previous studies show that VR allows tourism organizations to promote new types of relationships between tourists and destinations, to enhance the appeal and memorability of tourist experiences and to diversify consumption patterns, which could also be interesting for dealing with sustainability issues, such as seasonal demand of destinations or activities in wine tourism. Thus, we propose a conceptual model to analyze the influence of memorable tourism experiences on wine tourists' future intentions after a VR experience, providing additional details on the research methodology to empirically test the conceptual model. Innovation in business models with VR to promote new relationships with destinations or activities and diversify tourists' consumption patterns could be interesting to address
seasonal activities, such as the grape harvest or grape-treading, which are not continuously available for tourist observation/ participation, despite their high appeal. On the other hand, the results could contribute to wine and other kinds of tourism, conditioned by mobility issues such as restrictions on movements or personal interaction, due to health crises or personal constraints, increasing these tourism experiences' accessibility also in times of unavailability.