Keywords

Introduction

In this chapter, we look at the factors affecting digital travel. We present cases and review experimental results from studies comparing various rated aspects of the telepresence experience and the sense of place in realistic virtual settings. We look at situations in which the place experience is evoked by new technologies, and present results suggesting that there are valid reasons for building on previous telepresence research, and using some existing scales or measurements from the telepresence field. We then outline how concepts from human geography and marketing, such as word-of-mouth recommendation, intention to visit and perceptible affordance, can also be important.

We identify which of the various components that can contribute to telepresence are most important, for example, perceptual realism and its relation to sensory experiences in virtual environments, relating this back to our earlier discussions of the psychological and philosophical underpinnings of the sense of presence in Chapter 3. We examine how this relates to sense of place, using our own expanded version of Relph’s multi-component model of the elements of sense of place we described in Chapter 4. We also look at the dimension of hedonistic consumption, from marketing research, since this can be seen as an important factor in the motivation to undertake virtual travel and meetings.

Concerning the current status of digital travel, we share findings from a recent survey of vacation planning among people from Norway, in the summer of 2021. The backdrop is the pandemic situation with restrictions on travel. Although Norway is one of the least effected countries in terms of numbers infected, patients in hospitals and deaths due to the COVID-19 virus, the national health authorities and the government have recommended citizens not to travel abroad or to places in the country with outbreaks of COVID-19. Due to the progress of vaccination, with 50% of the population 16 years of older with at least one vaccination-dose at the time of writing, many of the restrictions, for instance, 10 days in quarantine hotel after a travel abroad, have been taken away for the fully vaccinated. For those with one dose, it is currently only a 3-day stay at home quarantine after travel abroad, unless a test at the border shows that a traveller has the virus. Moreover, since most countries in Europe have open borders for travellers with a negative virus test or a vaccination certificate, many have started their vacation planning or have decided to travel. The survey results should be interpreted in this context.

Because the topic is virtual tourism, digital travel and the future of travel, it is significant that the citizens have had a year and a half with few opportunities for travelling abroad. Although most of the restrictions have been accepted by the population, the longer the pandemic has lasted more people have felt a need for a normal vacation. For many in Norway, this means a holiday in Europe, in particular to the Mediterranean region. Because of this, the question of digital travel as a substitute for actual travel is not an unreasonable or purely theoretical question but rather a timely one in the context of actual travel planning.

The chapter has also a theoretical focus. For empirical research, the choice of methods and measurements matter. For instance, there are some limitations that have to do with the participants’ willingness to answer a survey or to take part in a video game study in person. For researchers, there are always alternatives that demand methodological choices. Of the two studies presented in this chapter, the video game study was the more time-consuming and focused study while the digital travel study has less depth, but could be carried out in a specific situation just before the main holiday-season in Norway. For both studies the term “travel experience” plays a key role. For the survey, the broader perspective, we are influenced by and build on the works of Erik Cohen for a way to describe travel motives and modes of tourism experiences.

In tourism research, Cohen is one of the most influential scholars. In his 1979 paper on the nature of the tourism experience he distinguishes between five main modes of tourism experience. In Cohen’s paper there are no references to telepresence or digital travel, but this is not to say that the five modes cannot be applied in this context. We find the first two, recreational and diversionary modes, particularly relevant for digital travel. These two modes concern entertainment, breaking out of daily routines and stress. They can also be used to describe to the extent to which an experience in a digital environment is a recreational or diversionary tourism experience.

Finally, there are opportunities created by technology. Due to the pandemic, digital meetings are not extraordinary, but rather common in work life and more generally. Similarly, visits to museum, broadcasted digital concerts and cultural events are actual alternatives for many to visiting in person. The pandemic had an immediate effect on the travel and hospitality industry, events, cultural institutions and the service sectors related to these industries. Due to the many restrictions, and the fact that it has not been possible to predict when the pandemic will be over, companies in these industries have looked for alternatives. Examples are the news story by skift.com, 1 April 2020 “Tour Guides and Attractions Operators Shift to Testing Experiences – Online”, 9 March 2021 “Heritage Sites Copy Tricks from Video Games to Woo VisitorsFootnote 1” and the company Eventbrite’ future outlook, 26 March 2021:

When we looked at the year-over-year data comparing March 2020 to March 2021, virtual tour and virtual travel events increased a staggering 41X. Although this growth will likely taper off as we start safely gathering in-person again, virtual travel and virtual tours have enabled people around the globe to experience new places from the comfort of their couches, and have given people access to places they perhaps could never travel to in person, and that’s a trend we hope continues post-pandemic.

The digital travel survey that we present in the second section of this chapter contains information on the current situation in the use of digital travel apps and virtual presentations.

Digital Travel and Sense of Place

In this section we present findings from an empirical study of a digital visit to Los Angeles in a video game. But first we ask: what is the relationship of a visit to a place in VE and an experience in vivo? The prerequisite for this question is that the VE used in the video game study is a replication of an actual place, the city of Los Angeles. Secondly, and particularly relevant for tourists on vacation, what is it that the person (traveller, tourist) would like to do in a virtual environment?

In Chapter 2 we presented Gibson’s affordance concept. Affordances are about action, intention to behave or actual behaviour. It is a useful concept theoretically as well as practically (method-wise). Few studies have compared the virtual actions with actual behaviour in the material world (Burke et al., 1992; Clemenson et al., 2020; Khenak et al., 2020; Mania & Chalmers, 2001; Nisenfeld 2003; Tjostheim & Haugland, 2005; Tjostheim & Saether-Larsen, 2005; Usoh et al., 2000). The results from these studies indicate that there are correlations and many similarities between the two. However, it is not an easy task to design an empirical study to investigate this relationship (Howlett et al., 2005). In the Howlett study the respective times taken to complete tasks in the real and virtual worlds were compared in order to establish how well the virtual experience mimicked the real-world scenario.

To study digital travel and sense of place we chose a city well known to many tourists, Los Angeles. Sightseeing is a popular activity, particularly for tourists (Adler, 1989; Dunn-Ross & Iso-Ahola, 1991). It is not something all travellers do, but it is rarely necessary to explain what it is. Sightseeing is meaningful in a virtual environment of a city as well as when actually visiting the city in vivo. This was a prerequisite for the study. Some researchers use the term ecological validity when they discuss this question—the goal is that the findings are representative, meaningful outside the study-context. Also, city tourism is particularly common among young travellers, which is relevant because we recruited students as our study participants.

The Use of Video Games and Photo-Realism

It is not difficult to find virtual environments of cities because in a number of video games the setting for the story is an urban environment or a place with which the player is quite likely to be familiar. The Xbox game Project Gotham Racing 4 (PGR4) can serve as illustration. In this game the player drives a car in the streets of London, Macau, Las Vegas, St Petersburg, Tokyo, New York City, Shanghai and Quebec. There is a second reason for mentioning this game; in PGR4 there is also an alternative to the racing option, called “tourist mode”, in which the player can explore the cities in the game without competing. There are other examples, such as the Playstation game Gangs of London that also features a tourist mode. In the tourist mode the player can explore and take photographs of the city’s most famous landmarks. The most recent game by Xbox at the time of writing, Forza Horizon 5, launched in November 2021, features places in Mexico including the city of Guanajuato.

Widyarto and Latiff (2007) argue that a virtual application works well in a travel context as a tool for getting to know the place, for instance, for navigation purposes. Schwartz (2006), in his study of video games, discusses the fact that many games combine fantasy with a sense of realism. He uses the game Grand Theft Auto as an example and cites a player who says: “you feel as if you’re in a real town/city with other people” (Schwartz, 2006: 315). According to Schwartz (2006), realism and attention to detail allow gamers to accept the game spaces as real, and therefore some gamers choose to visit the game space, that is, they explore the game space as a tourist would explore a physical location.

There are several genres of video game, one of which is termed “life simulations” (Jong et al., 2013). For life simulations, the goal is not to mimic social interaction as accurately as possible, but often, social interaction plays a role. There is also a trend referred to as “realism” (Dormans, 2011), which might explain why the graphics in many games are often based on photography. There is a second aspect to realism in games. As Sommerseth (2007: 767) argues that: “realism is dependent on actions rendering expected results in a game. The question of realism is tied to the experience of the player, rather than the constructed environment of the game”.

A study by Gackenbach and Bown (2011) concerned video games in different genres: action, adventure, driving, miscellaneous, roleplaying and sports. They used the Temple Presence Inventory (Lombard et al., 2009) to measure perceptual richness. One of the conclusions was that perceptual richness, “which is about how the game is like the real world”, has a positive impact particularly for sport, but also for action games. In a fantasy world, it is not important to replicate a city or another place that can be visited. However, in a tourism context and with sightseeing in a city as the activity, realism is obviously important. The VE of the city should be, and be perceived as, similar to the actual city. Then it makes sense to study tourist behaviour in the VE.

We used the video game Midnight Club LA, a Playstation game, to study sense of place. The choice of the video game with the city Los Angeles was primarily based on the following two factors; (1) realism and (2) the fact that many users know how to navigate in a game environment. Not all citizens are experienced video gamers, but most people know the basics, how games work. Often with IT applications there is a learning phase before the user can concentrate on doing what he or she is supposed to do. To move forward in the game environment, to stop, etc. To race fast might require some skills, but the younger generation often have these skills already. For the sightseeing in the Los Angeles study, only very basic video game skills were needed. The level of realism is high in the game, mostly because of the attention to detail and good graphics made by the developers of the game.

The game Driver: San Francisco by Ubisoft has many similarities to Midnight club LA. This is a review of this game by Joe BarronFootnote 2:

Driver: San Francisco is, as you might have already guessed, set in the real-world San Francisco, as well as small parts of Marin County and Oakland. All in all, there will be a staggering 208 miles of road, all of which is looking remarkably detailed in what has been shown of the game so far. The graphical detail and the rock solid 60 frames per second are very impressive for a game of this scale. The environments look superb, if a little stylized, and the city’s landmarks are instantly recognizable. Roads are populated with far more traffic than we are used to seeing in other open-world games and all of the cars are very well modelled with detailed textures which would not look out of place in closed-circuit racing games like Forza Motorsport and Shift. All of this detail combined with such a superb frame-rate should make this version of San Francisco one of the most accurate and enjoyable yet seen in games.

The trend towards convergences between gaming and cinema, and gaming and online technologies, started at least 15 years ago (Freitas & Griffiths, 2008). The key aspect is realism. One technique to achieve realism is to merge computer-generated graphics with real-life images. For a normal viewer it is sometimes impossible to distinguish between a photorealistic computer image and a photographic image (Lyu & Farid, 2005; Maejima et al., 2010). An example from the film-industry is the science-fiction thriller “Alita: Battle Angel” by Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron, released in January 2019. In many scenes in this movie CGI animation is combined with live action. For most viewers it is hard to distinguish between graphics and film in the action scenes.

Creating a Sightseeing Experience in a Video Game

Photo-realism matters, but it is not only the visual aspects that plays a role in a sense of place experience. In the Los Angeles study, the activity given to the participants was sightseeing in a famous area in the city. Often there is a guide telling the tourist, the sightseer, what he or she is looking at, and stories about the place. There are many good reasons for this, one being that people think narratively (Weick, 1995; Woodside et al., 2007). There is an entertainment element to it also—good stories are persuasive (McKee, 2003; Woodside & Megehee, 2010). Turner et al. (2005) comment that the users of a virtual environment need a meaningful narrative in order to create an engaging experience and a sense of place. A sightseeing experience in a VE is more than a visual experience. Narratives are, for example, stories that a user can inhabit from a first-person perspective. The narrative creates meaning for the individual’s experience in a virtual environment. The narrative plot can be an important contributor to the sense of being there (Gorini et al., 2011; Turner et al., 2013).

Some tourists go sightseeing on their own without a guide present. There is also the possibility of using an audio guide that can be played on a mobile device, for instance, a mobile phone. We chose this alternative. For the city Los Angeles, we chose audio guides that the traveller can use while visiting the area that includes Hollywood Boulevard. The narrative for the sightseeing tour was made from a Tourcaster audio guide, a guide that can be downloaded on a mobile phone or another device. In vivo a tourist will turn the audio guide on and off himself, and listen when it suits him. For this study, we had to produce a narrative that was the same for all participants.

The sightseeing was a live event in the sense that the visuals of the game were used without any adaptation. In order to create a better sightseeing experience, the music that comes as a component of the game was turned off and replaced by an audio clip taken from the Tourcaster “Hollywood Audio Tour”. The audio came from a laptop computer placed in front of the participant, the sightseer. No information was given regarding the name of the Playstation game. In the next section we give more details about the design of the study.

A Virtual Visit to Los Angeles

The game Midnight Club LA features some of the well-known sections of the city Los Angeles. With the game and an audio guide, we designed a sightseeing tour in the city, in Hollywood Boulevard and the historic district, a live event that lasted approximately 15 minutes. The guide told stories about the buildings, events, movies and what the person could see when he or she is actually there in the streets.

In the game, the player can drive on the road or on the pavement, but not through buildings. Similarly, the tourist, the participant in the study could freely navigate in Los Angeles in the game. Because we framed the event as a sightseeing tour, the participant had to follow instructions from the guide (recorded in advance) and also instructions by the interviewer as a co-guide. The participant, the sightseer was only given instructions if she moved too fast or too slowly. The setting was an auditorium with a big screen—the Playstation console was connected to a monitor.

A total of 60 individuals, primarily students participated in the LA study, from a number of countries. Of the 60 participants, 60% were female and 40% were male, 48% were between 19 and 24 years of age, and 75% answered that they used video or computer games approximately once a month or less frequently. The nationalities of the 19 summer school students were; Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, Croatia, Ethiopia, Greece, Kosovo, Lithuania, Nepal, Pakistan, Portugal, Tanzania, Ukraine, USA and Zimbabwe. The other 41 students came from Norway.

The Sightseers’ Experience of Telepresence and Sense of Place

To measure the telepresence experience, it is common to use questions that distinguish between aspects that constitute telepresence. The measurement, the Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) by Lombard et al. (2000, 2009, 2011) has these factors: engagement (mental immersion), spatial presence, social realism, social presence and perceptual realness. For the Los Angeles study, the participants answered questions for each for these factors on a seven-point Likert scale from fully disagree to fully agree.

Relph’s place theory (Relph, 1976) has been used for numerous studies of sense of place, or experience of place (e.g. Benyon et al., 2006; Seamon, 1982, 1996, 2000, 2018; Shamai, 1991; Smith, 2006; Smyth et al., 2015; Turner & Turner, 2006; Turner et al., 2005). Traditionally, human geography has not been concerned with virtual reality, and the role of technology. Researchers in this field have primarily focused on humans living in a place, on secondary homeowners, and less frequently on visitors to the place. Edward Relph has a phenomenological perspective in his work. He discusses everyday experiences and the relationship between the human and the place. In the introduction to his paper “Spirit of Place and Sense of Place in Virtual Realities” (2007) Edward Relph comments on place and VR:

I have written about the concept “place” from a phenomenological perspective for many years…, but we have limited knowledge of digital virtual reality… Nevertheless, it seems to me that mutual interaction is at work between what might be called “real” place and virtual places.” His view reflects the notion that virtual places cannot be authentic, but “virtual places can be more or less accurate reproductions (our emphasis) of real places and more or less convincing on their own terms. (Relph, 2007: 23)

In Chapter 4 (Table 4.1) we presented the two main categories; insideness sense of place and outsideness sense of place with four and three types, seven in total. Relph distinguishes between these seven types of place experience, but they are not all possible variants for tourists. In comparison with residents, tourists visit a place for a short time. Hence, the outsideness categories seem to be the most appropriate for tourism and a sightseeing experience.

We could not find any that had developed a measurement based on Relph’s experience of place theory. We therefore decided to develop a measurement that included behavioural outsideness and vicarious outsideness (unpublished thesis, Tjostheim, 2020), two new types in addition to the seven by Relph in Place and Placelessness (Relph, 1976), as discussed in Chapter 4. For the Los Angeles study we used a measurement, a questionnaire with statements similar in form to the Temple Presence Inventory. Shamai (1991: 349) writes that: “Each different way of sensing the place can be seen as a different level on an ordinal scale; that is, starting with the lowest level of sense of place and ‘climbing’ up six more steps to reach the most intense and deepest way of sensing a place”. See Table 4.3, in Chapter 4, for a description of these two additional types of placeness, behavioural outsideness and vicarious outsideness, and how they relate to the seven types identified by Relph (1976).

In the survey, the participants also answered questions about how knowledgeable they considered themselves to be about Los Angeles and whether they had been to Los Angeles. Knowledge of the destination was measured with a three-item scale adapted from Smith and Park (1992) and Suh and Chang (2006). The purpose was to have a scale that could be used before and after the sightseeing in the VE, to observe the immediate effect of the experience in the VE.

Los Angeles is a tourist destination. In the survey, we included a question about intention to visit the city the next three years. Is this intention related to actual behaviour? In consumer studies purchase intention is often used as a measure of anticipated response behaviour (Bearden et al., 1984). According to Tian-Cole and Cromption (2003), a person’s intention to visit a destination is a determinant of their actual behaviour of visiting that destination or not. Hence a question about behavioural intentions can be used as a surrogate for a destination choice.

Results—Virtual Sightseers Had the Feeling of Being There in the City

Our main interest was to investigate whether or not the digital sightseer had the feeling of being there, and what type of sense of place experience the sightseer had. Figure 5.1 shows the scores measured on a scale of 1–7.

Fig. 5.1
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How the participants experienced Los Angeles measured with three alternative measurements

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Figure 5.1 shows on average a score on the positive side of the scale for all three concepts, telepresence, sense of place and the hedonic consumption experience. When there are significant differences in the variances in the answers, as in this case, the average score does not give the best information. We therefore show three groups (Fig. 5.2). The first is those that answered 1–3, referred to as the negative group for telepresence, those that did not have the feeling of being there. The second group is the neither-nor group, those that answered 4. The third group consists of those that did experience the feeling of being there, and similarly for sense of place and hedonic consumption experience.

Fig. 5.2
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Los Angeles—the feeling of being there

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The main finding was that 2 out of 3 participants reported a feeling of being there, a sense of place experience and/or a hedonic consumption experience (Fig. 5.2). The participants were asked to report how they felt, and the interviews took place immediately after the digital sightseeing.

The questions in the Temple Presence Inventory about perceptual realism were used to create three groups. The “senses evoked group” were 18 of the 60 participants in the study. This was the 18 that reported that several of their senses were evoked. We looked at the score on the affordances question. Figure 5.3 shows the correlation with, or the effect of perceptual realism on the affordances.

Fig. 5.3
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Los Angeles—perceptual realism and affordances

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The sightseeing lasted approximately 15 minutes Compared to TV or online advertisements this is a long time. It is also an interactive experience and not only a viewing experience. Could we see a direct effect of the digital sightseeing experience on the participants? The questionnaire before and the after-the-sightseeing questionnaire had these three questions:

  1. (a)

    “As a tourist destination I feel very knowledgeable about Los Angeles”

  2. (b)

    “I feel if I had to book a trip to Los Angeles today, I would need to gather very little information in order to make a wise decision”

  3. (c)

    “I feel very confident of my ability to judge the quality of a trip to this city”

The answers to these questions indicated that the digital experience had a direct impact on the participants—see Fig. 5.4.

Fig. 5.4
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The effect of the digital experience on the need for travel planning

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Readers of human geography know the works of Edward Relph, especially his place theory. How Relph describes sense of place is well known to researchers in human geography. In tourism, his place theory is known, but not very often incorporated or used by tourism scholars. Based on our Los Angeles study, we would argue that it seems quite appropriate to apply the place theory of Edward Relph to digital experiences as well as for actual visits by travellers to tourist destinations.

The “hosts” at actual tourist destinations consist of many groups; from professional service employees in the tourism and hospitality industry to locals that only occasionally interact directly with visitors. It is not likely that a city, a town or a small place without any locals will be an attractive tourist destination. The quality of the guest–host interaction is an important component for travellers. In a digital application, it is not easy to replicate this human component, the face-to-face interactions. We recognise this aspect, but it was not addressed in the travel survey presented in the next section.

Digital Travel Applications—A Survey on Behaviours and Attitudes

The survey was targeted at a cross-section of citizens from Norway. We invited respondents from panels that recruit from the general population. The email invitation had the title “A travel survey – about visiting places digitally”. As a consequence, we can assume that some that were invited, but with no or little interested in travel, overlooked the email invitation. Most employees have paid vacations of typically four weeks in the summer period. However, the restrictions caused by the pandemic have influenced and made vacation planning more difficult. In particular his is the case for international travel. This also means that what we refer to as digital travel might be an alternative for some. In total, 208 answered our survey. Two respondents were excluded due to incomplete answers. In this chapter we report on the answers of 206 respondents.

The survey had the following four sections; the profile of the respondents, travel plans, their view of digital tourist applications before, during or after a trip and also the role of a privately administered vaccine. Since international travel is only allow for fully vaccinated or travellers with a negative COVID-19 test, there has been a demand for taking a vaccine outside of the national health provision.

We present the survey findings for the age groups 16–29 years old, 30–49 years old, the 50–70 years old, and for all participants named “All”. As for the population, the survey had 50% women and 50% men. For level of education, approximately 25% are in each of the groups—see figure A. As was expected, it was the 16–29 years old group who had the highest share of primary education only. In general, the educational profile, the age and gender distribution of the participants represent the national population quite well—see Figs. 5.5 and 5.6.

Fig. 5.5
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The participants—age and gender

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Fig. 5.6
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The participants—age and education

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Digital meetings have become normal. There are many platforms for digital meetings and students and employees are often required to use a digital platform for meetings. As show in Fig. 5.7 approximately 80% have had experience with digital meetings. It is a high number that reflects the fact that the pandemic has had a significant impact on the use of digital meetings.

Fig. 5.7
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Experience with digital meetings

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Not all have the time and resources to have holidays many times a year, but for some travel has a high priority. Figure 5.8 shows that 2 or 3 times a year is quite common with 26 and 16% for all. For the youngest age group 42% answered once a year and only 3% three times or more.

Fig. 5.8
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Frequency of holiday travel per year

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Due to the pandemic, there has been a number of restrictions for travel in particular for international travel. At the time of the survey, July 2021, international travel was allowed, but due to a risk of being infected, many preferred to postpone the vacation. Instead, short distance travel and travel within the national boarders were much more common. This is reflected in the answers—approximately 50% had not planned a vacation, see Fig. 5.9.

Fig. 5.9
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Travel planning 2021

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Of all the participants only 10% had planned a vacation abroad—see Fig. 5.10. This is in accordance with findings in similar national surveys that report that 8–13% have planned a trip abroad.

Fig. 5.10
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Holiday destinations

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In most cases fully vaccinated citizens can travel abroad and avoid quarantine even when the country visited has a high level of infections. However, the majority of citizens under the age of 45 had not been offered two doses of the vaccine at the time of the survey. For the 16–29 years old, 44% were waiting for the first dose—see Fig. 5.11. This is the background for the question about willingness to take a vaccine privately to make travel easier.

Fig. 5.11
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The vaccination and age-groups

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Taken together, for the answers “maybe” and “yes, I would take a private vaccine”, it is the 30–49 years olds that respond most positively to this alternative, 13%—see Fig. 5.12. The government and the health authorities have been warning the citizens against vaccines that are not offered by the health authorities. Still, for the age groups 30–49 years old, a total of 25% will take or will consider a private vaccine. This indicates that travel is important to them. It is not only recommendations by the government, restrictions and quarantines that matter. One of the reasons that motivate citizens to take a vaccine is travel.

Fig. 5.12
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Private vaccination and travel

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For travel information, the Internet has for many years played a key role in planning, booking and communication about travel services. Digital travel apps and virtual tourism applications can be seen as information sources in travel context. Figure 5.13 illustrates whether the vacation planner uses information sources with geographical or place information.

Fig. 5.13
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Sources of geographical information and information that can create a sense of place

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For the question about information sources, we asked about Google street view or similar applications that have geographical information about where hotels, attractions and sights are. This kind of application can create a sense of place. As shown in Fig. 5.14, quite few have used virtual travel apps.

Fig. 5.14
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The use travel apps or virtual presentations

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The core section of the survey contained questions about digital travel applications, virtual tourism and presentations or applications that can be regarded as travel products. We wrote an introduction to explain some of the terms, that the purpose of some of these travel applications can be to create a feeling of being there or to be a substitute for the travel. A digital meeting is not the same as meeting the person face-to-face, but the digital meeting can have many of the same characteristics. A vacation is also about getting away from where you live. Therefore, to visit a museum or attraction digitally is not a substitute for the vacation, but is an example of a digital travel.

We distinguished between the presentation, what it is like and, in the following question the experience itself. We asked about museums, hotels, attractions and guided tours, one at a time. The role of many travel and tourism companies is to the get people to travel, to get them to book trips and travel to the destination. Therefore, advertising and marketing are key factors for these businesses. We used the word “pre-taste” (of the experience) to indicate that it is more than just the presentation of information and plain facts—the presentation is intended to let the person feel what it is like to visit the place. A pre-taste is not a means to an end; the purpose is to create an interest and or to influence the person to book a trip. As a digital meeting can sometimes be a substitute for a meeting in person, a digital travel product can be a substitute for the experience in situ.

Most museums have online presentations with pictures or videos of their exhibitions. Some replicate the museum more accurately and create digital presentations intended to give the user a feeling of being in the museum. This is the backdrop of the first question about digital museums’ presentations.

For the respondents view on digital presentations of a museum or an attraction, 58% of the 30–49 years old and 46% of the 50–70 years old choose “pre-taste of the experience”. For the 16–29 years old, “marketing” was the most typical answer with 58% (see Fig. 5.15). Quite few, only 2%, answered that the experience can be a substitute for the in situ experience. But for the related question about subjective feeling of the experience compared to the in situ experience, 22% of the 30–49 years old, 17% of the 16–29 years old and 13% of the 50–70 years old answered that it can be similar to the in situ experience (Fig. 5.16).

Fig. 5.15
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Digital presentations of museums or other attractions

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Fig. 5.16
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Museums and other attractions—the digital experience in comparison to the in situ experience

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For hotels, 48% of the 50–70 years old and 43% of the 30–49 years old answered “a pre-taste” while 58% of the 16–29 years old answered “marketing”. An insignificant number, 1%, answered “a substitute” for a visit to a hotel—see Fig. 5.17. For obvious reasons the need for accommodation cannot be substituted digitally, but exploring what the hotel is like, the building, the location, etc., is relevant. Generally, a substantial part of the travel budget concerns accommodation and the 50 plus are normally more willing to pay for a good and central hotel compared to the younger generations. For activities, it was essentially the same pattern as for hotels (see Fig. 5.18).

Fig. 5.17
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Digital presentations of a hotel

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Fig. 5.18
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Digital presentations of activities

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For activities and the question whether or not the digital experience can be about the same or similar to the actual experience, 9% answered “similar to” and 21% “about the same”—see Fig. 5.19. The differences between the age groups were small.

Fig. 5.19
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Activities—the digital experience in comparison to the in situ experience

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It is quite common to take part in guided tours while visiting a destination. The next question was about a digital guided tour; is it similar to, a pre-taste, or a substitute for a physical guided tour.

For this question, there are differences between the age groups with the highest number for the 50–70 years old. For this age group 55% of answered “a pre-taste” for a digital version of a guided tour—see Fig. 5.20. For the 30–49 years old, 47% answered “a pre-taste” and for the 16–9 years old 42% answered in the same way.

Fig. 5.20
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Digital presentations of guided tours

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For the question about whether or not the digital guided tour experience is about the same or similar to the in situ experience, 27% answered “about the same” and 18% “similar to” with only minor differences between the age groups (Fig. 5.21). Of the different types of destinations, the respondents gave the most positive answers for the digital alternatives for museums and guided tours. Most travellers take pictures or videos, with cameras or phones. Quite few, 8% thought that digital travel applications can be better than the traveller’s own pictures and videos—see Fig. 5.22.

Fig. 5.21
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Guided tours—the digital experience in comparison to the in situ experience

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Fig. 5.22
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Digital travel applications for sharing and re-experience the vacation

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After the questions about experiences with and opinions about current digital travel applications, we asked about the role of digital travel applications in the future. The answers to these questions are not easy to interpret. To predict what will happen in the future in a longer time frame is guesswork, but it gives an indication of what kind of expectations for the future the respondents have.

The expectation is that digital travel applications will play a role in the planning phase—44% answered with this alternative, but with significant differences between the age groups, see Fig. 5.23. For “while travelling”, however, we find low numbers for all three age-groups.

Fig. 5.23
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Digital travel applications in the future—expectations

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Figure 5.24 shows that 40% indicate a willingness to pay for digital travel products for historical places, sights and to avoid queues.

Fig. 5.24
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Willingness to pay for digital travel pro

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Questions about willingness to pay are also hard to interpret. Some will not reveal what they actually are willing to pay because they believe that it is better to indicate a low price to avoid high prices. In total, 68% indicated that they are willing to pay 10% of the ticket prices at the destination—see Fig. 5.25.

Fig. 5.25
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Willingness to pay for digital travel products – a comparison to ticket prices of a service at the travel destination

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The answers to the question about arguments for digital travel was coded by the authors. 67% did not mention any positive arguments—see Fig. 5.26. Some 14% wrote that there are good arguments without mention any. There are some positive arguments, such as that less travel is good for the environment, and there are barriers due to disabilities, illness and old age that favour digital travel.

Fig. 5.26
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Arguments for digital travel

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But the majority is not convinced or very interested in a digital alternative to actual travel. Figures 5.27 and 5.28 show that there is a small segment, 10–20%, who believe that they, in the future, will use digital travel products that create an experience similar to the in situ experience. We can name this group “digital travellers”.

Fig. 5.27
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Digital travel—a substitute for the in situ experience

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Fig. 5.28
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The digital travel experience—similar to the in situ experience?

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Conclusions

As to why we experience the feeling being there, in Chapter 2 we drew attention to theoretical contributions by James J. Gibson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and many others who have discussed perception and the role of the senses. In the empirical studies we have used the Temple Presence Inventory, a measurement that includes perceptual realism about the five senses as one factor. We conclude that the perceptual mediated experience is actually similar to the unmediated experience. This is not always the case but, for those experiencing a high level of telepresence, all senses can be evoked—not only the visual and the audio senses that are directly stimulated by the technology.

Based on the findings from the empirical studies, and the Los Angeles study in particular, that not for all but for many of the subjects, the individuals that “visited the city on the screen”, the digital sightseeing, had the feeling of being there in the moment. The telepresence experience was evoked by the VE and it seems that the experience of place was perceived as real to the user in the intuitive phase when the digital sightseeing took place. We also found through our survey a group of people that we refer to as digital travellers.

Looking forward, with the possibilities of advanced technology in mind, what our survey reveals seems not unlikely. There are many ways in which digital travel can be developed further, just as there are a range of different ways in which the current situation of digital meetings can be improved. We cover this topic—of how to design digital travel and meetings so that they match the psychosocial needs of their participants—in Chapter 6.