Keywords

1 Introduction

In recent years, and particularly driven by the global pandemic, disruptive innovations in the digital sphere appeared, causing an acceleration of information and communication technologies becoming part of everyday life. Destination management organizations and other tourism service providers have adapted their offers by expanding physical experiences into digital and virtual domains [1, 2]. Useful in the marketplace for a while, online platforms and QR codes gained in importance to access tourism products and services [3]. These and more recent digitalization efforts appear to expand to all phases of the customer journey.

Further advancements flourishing within the technology field focus on computing innovation through Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR & VR). This has opened possibilities for a new paradigm in the so-called Metaverse [4]. This post-reality universe is uniting physical reality with digital virtuality. By bridging the core elements of social media with affordable AR and VR applications, a creative interplay that is transforming education and entertainment is currently being unleashed [5]. This novel form of Mixed Reality (MR) has the potential to deliver additional value through co-creative engagements between the consumer and the producer [6].

For the contexts of travel, tourism, hospitality and heritage, this means unlocking novel ways in which to create customer experiences that transcend the limits of current physical and virtual dimensions. For instance, in cultural heritage tourism, visitors can dynamically interact with virtual artifacts and travelers with special needs can participate in personalized options with inclusive access [7, 8]. While some destinations might seek to supplement their physical spaces with digital and virtual offers, there is increasing evidence that virtual destinations can become attractions in their own right [2].

This shift towards professionalization of virtual offers is not only seen by pioneers within the destination management organization space, but also increasingly in policy making. Indeed, the extension of physical experiences into attractive hybrid and virtual offers has become a key concern on the European policy level. For instance, the Tourism Transition Pathway, a document that sets out the tourism agenda of Europe for 2030 by the European Commission, declared the digitalization of travel and heritage experiences as a key pillar for tomorrow’s tourism [8, 9]. In order to tap fully into the potential of holistic virtual experiences, it is thus necessary to expand fragmented digital offers in the pre-travel, during and post-travel stages and develop a virtualization level that encompasses the notion of never-ending tourism, a term originally coined by the Digital Innovation in Tourism in Tourism Observatory of Politecnico di Milano (2022) [10, 11]. To this end, this research paper dives into the novel concept of never-ending tourism and sets out to answer two main research questions, namely:

  1. 1.

    What does never-ending tourism look like?

  2. 2.

    What are scenarios for a never-ending tourism future in 2030?

2 Literature Review

2.1 Tourism Experiences and the Metaverse

Technology is an essential part of the tourism and hospitality industry [12]. Beside stand-alone technologies, a major focus had traditionally been placed on network solutions that support operational efficiency, profitability, sustainability and competitiveness in the form of smart tourism [13]. In this context, particularly VR, AR and MR solutions find increasing application. New opportunities emerge for the so-called metaverse. The term comes from the word meta, the Greek prefix meaning after and beyond and the second word describing the universe. The idea is to unify a universe of merging physical reality and digital virtuality [5]. In tourism, the metaverse is expected to provide active participation and co-creation of immersive place experiences. Interconnecting actual reality with virtuality enhances the physical space. In this virtual shared space, services and products emerge as a collective [7]. With increasing network capabilities and improved hardware, visitors may be switching between these worlds seamlessly [14]. Therefore, visitors will no longer distinguish between physical and real objects [15].

The key is to offer diversity from normality. Attractions spark excitement and provide added value, potentially triggering memorable customer experiences [16]. Herewith, Mixed Reality unlocks new possibilities for cultural heritage sites [7]. With inclusive access for people with disabilities, additional value is generated through the technology-enhanced interplay between education and entertainment [5]. AR is adding an additional layer of information on monuments and artefacts, or in gastronomy where people scan a QR code for additional information on the menu provided. The metaverse is not only expected to be used for promoting the industry’s intangible products, it may also be used for guiding and navigating onsite and on top, new virtual hospitality experiences will be designed and monetized [4]. The metaverse is about interaction, immersion and communication, changing the way individuals learn, work and shop, by bringing together people without the physical limitations of the real world [4, 17].

A hybrid metaverse tourism ecosystem is expected to arise, where new stakeholders will provide different services. Therefore, metaverse tourism organizations will have to conceptualize marketing solutions to cater for both, the digital and virtual world, as well as the space in-between [4]. Some best practice examples converging technology, music, film, education and culture are already on the market. For instance, combining natural heritage sites with latest technologies is the mission of the company Our Worlds Inc.. By launching an immersive 360° Extended Reality, users can explore the unique stories of indigenous people, their culture and land [18]. Another testimony to provide sensory rich digital experience are “the architects of taste” Bompass & Parr. People worldwide are meeting at the 3D virtual world Decentraland to enjoy their virtual tequila education sessions [19]. These are but a few of the latest examples showing how hospitality operators are starting to experiment, enrich experiences along all phases of the customer journey and take a lead role in this field [4].

2.2 Never-Ending Tourism

The majority of technological solutions on the market heavily focus on the pre-travel and on-site-phases of the customer journey. With the pandemic shift towards travel restrictions and long-term sustainable change [20], ICTs are increasingly implemented to create attractive virtual offers in which no actual trip is needed. While the tourism industry is recovering to pre-pandemic levels, there remains a demand for the virtual experience of places. This could take place in lieu of travel, as a nostalgic revisiting of places in the post-travel phase, or as an anticipatory preparing within the pre-travel phase. As an information-intense activity, reliable information is inevitable in tourism, when thinking of natural disaster, weather, safety, politics, social unrest and economics that may make travel unavailable or unsafe [15]. Therefore, tourism service providers need to increasingly provide offers that give travelers access to media-rich data and the opportunity to experience digital or photorealistic reconstructions of places, attractions and archaeological sites [4].

The extension of digital information into more experiential virtuality has become a trend, not only with the rise of the metaverse. It goes hand in hand with the latest policy and strategic directions made by destination management organizations and the European Commission. The extension of physical experiences into hybrid and virtual offers has become a key concern. The Tourism Transition Pathway, a document launched in 2022 to set out the tourism agenda of Europe for 2030 by the European Commission, identified the digitalization and virtualization of travel and heritage experiences a key pillar for tomorrow’s tourism [8]. Thereby, never-ending tourism is proposed as an overarching idea to encompass tourism as an ubiquitous activity, which supported by technology, can be experienced on-site and off-site. With a particular focus on some of tourism’s biggest issues, including overtourism, overcrowding, sites at risk, natural and cultural heritage preservation and accessibility [21], digitalized tourism offers and virtual spaces are seen as a powerful way to allow visitors to experience a digital twin of attractions on-site [8, 9].

The notion of the digital twin concept comes from the information technology and manufacturing sectors. It is a virtual replica of the structure, functionality and behavioral traits of a product or service [22]. With tourism being a physical, emotional, mutli-phasic and multisensory experience [6, 23], the construction of digital twins in a virtual environment can be understood as a complex challenge. To this end, this study aims to explore what never-ending tourism could entail as a future scenario. The methodological approach is explained next.

3 Methodology

Never-ending tourism is a term largely used conceptually today, while empirical research is still lacking. This study thus aimed at understanding and empirically exploring never-ending tourism as a potential future reality. An exploratory qualitative research study was used. A total of 15 online in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts, held via Zoom in summer 2022. Study participants were recruited based on a set of inclusion criteria. According to a purposive sampling approach, experts had to have a) a good understanding of new media, such as VR, AR and MR and b) work experience in the tourism and hospitality industry. For instance, interviewed experts included individuals who work as a Web 3.0 consultant, MR producer, university professor, VR startup founder or researcher in the field of digital tourism solutions.

With no incentives being offered, all participants were invited and recruited with personal e-mails. The interview guideline was based on the foregone literature review and consisted of a series of open-ended questions. Interview participants were asked questions around the tourism customer journey, tourism experiences, mixed reality solutions and the metaverse. For instance, questions asked included: 1) When thinking about a traveler’s customer journey from pre-, during- to post-stay, where do you see the greatest benefit of these experiences? (2) What future scenarios do you see for 2023, 2025 and 2030? What is happening when? (3) What is the benefit/added value of digital and virtual travel experiences?

All online interviews were voice-recorded. A multi-step analysis process was adopted. First, all interviews were transcribed by the automatized functionality on Zoom. Subsequently, all interview transcripts were double-checked, organized and prepared for coding. The qualitative analysis software NVivo was used to manually code each interview through an inductive coding process. A sorting, re-arranging and clustering process followed. This final step enabled to group codes based on the most dominant similarities and distinctions. This led to three manually determined and plausible scenarios that emerged as most distinct from one another, outlining possible 2030 avenues of never-ending tourism.

Following recent future studies, including Yeoman et al. [24], Rincon et al. [25] and Neuhofer et al. [26], a storytelling approach was adopted to present the data representing future scenarios in an accessible and personal way. The raw data that are most representative of each scenario were added in the form of quotes throughout the storytelling narratives in their original form, shown in italics.

The 15 interviewed experts are between the ages of 28 and 50. The gender represented are 12 male and 3 female, from a diversity of geographical regions, including Spain, Austria, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Russia and Belarus. The findings are structured into three scenarios, including 1) Never-ending support “The digital companion”, 2) Never-ending balance “The digital escape”, and 3) Never-ending relationship “The digital connection”.

4 Findings

4.1 Scenario 1: Never-Ending Support “THE Digital Companion”

Seline and Alicia are friends that work together for a famous shoe brand in London. In 2025, the company “split their marketing department into two teams”. Seline is responsible for the company’s IRL “In Real Life” marketing strategy and Alicia for the URL strategy, basically their digital appearance. Twice a year they go on vacation. Each time, one of the women is choosing a destination. While Seline loves “to plunge into an adventure without knowing what is going to happen there”, Alicia is eager to plan their desired holidays months ahead. “The planning behavior very much depends on the individuals personality”. For her it is “the high amount of dopamine that is released by the brain into her body while thinking about traveling”. Meanwhile, Alicia’s “virtual assistant appears through her AR glasses showcasing the three destinations she was talking about the most over the last year”. Number one was Paris. Both automatically envision the city of lights, getting the first impressions and information about the place on their devices. Working in the fashion industry, both think about the outfit they want to wear in front of the Eiffel Tower. The women love “the fact they can be whoever they want to be when on vacation”. “The virtual assistant is presenting the trendiest outfits in their social media feed and the latest Netflix series about Paris to refresh their memories and get into the right mood”. “Therefore, the expectations towards the destination are high”. The dates are automatically matched with their calendars, and the cheapest connections are booked. They only have to check-in at the train station by the recognition of their faces.

Alicia loves everything about heritage and history. When “wandering through the city on-site with her hands in the pockets”, the virtual assistant asks for acceptance to start the historical tour. Her “AR glasses automatically visualize historical occasions when moving through that space”. Besides an additional layer of information, holograms appear that reskin the location in a new way. It displays what the buildings used to look like, it “dramatizes a historical event on the street and allows her to view an X-ray of the archeology below the street”. Amazed by “a reconstruction of something that doesn't exist anymore”, she loves to “physically interact with the space”. Beside other travelers enjoying the multilingual experience, Alicia realized “a visualization of a future building project where the local community gathered to participate with their ideas”. A place where “digital applications and narrative meet traditional information materials”, such as flyers and a large advertising panel.

Meanwhile, Seline sat down on a bench. Unlike her friend, she loves art, fantasy and entertainment. One of her favorite NFT (non-fungible token) artists is said to launch a surprise at exactly on that spot. Suddenly an avatar appears, guiding her trough the spectacle, buildings start to change their façade with “perfectly synchronized music and storyline”. “Through this multiple layers of engagement”, she really got “involved into the story”. When reflecting on the customized spectacle with the stranger next to hear, Seline realizes that they know each other from a virtual gathering. The friends continue strolling around the city and enjoying all sights and fantastic places in the physical world, with their virtual assistant catering for their every need. They “embrace the full presence of their stay”.

When flying back home, “their smart glasses automatically created a 360°-degree after movie for their social platforms” and for Seline a physical photo album as a special memorabilia of their stay. When having lunchbreak at the firm, the friends love to put on their VR glasses and immerse themselves into Paris repeatedly. “The digital and physical world go hand-in-hand”. To enhance their throwback memories, the women order some croissants online, which they enjoy eating, while virtually immersing themselves into this beautiful French city once again.

4.2 Scenario 2: Never-Ending Balance “The Digital Escape”

Laura is a 45 year-old CEO of a New York based tech company. Every day at 6 am, she switches on the screen to enjoy her morning yoga session. Afterwards the alarm of her children’s smart watches go off. Her countdown to prepare them for school. Just like her husband, Laura is working from home. By putting on her new AR glasses, she is joining the team remotely, asking for her virtual assistant to appear. After launching the company’s new application, it is time for their annual vacation. As “traveling got more expensive over the years”, the family is lucky to have both access and the finances to fly to the south for two weeks.

The “trip is automatically planned from flights to hotels and tickets for the attractions according to their preferences” from last year’s stay. The family is leaving all their devices behind. For Laura and her husband, it feels like “escaping from reality as most of their daily interactions are digitally-enabled”. The couple is forced to be organized due to their daily life responsibilities. When “arriving at their destination they want to relax without being stressed to meet every point on the schedule”. She feels that all our “bodies are rooted in the real world”. “To allow the full range of emotions, especially when the feeling of novelty is gone, we need physical items, lights and people around us”. These days are reserved to “re-connect as a family and to take care of everybody’s physical and mental health”. The family enjoys doing sports and appreciate discovering new places. Mostly the two kids are the tour guides, as their friends showed them beforehand around the destination in the digital twin replication of the place. Throughout the two weeks, the family is in awe of the places and its beauty, as well as the memories they make with the locals and other fellow travelers.

When flying back home, the family talks and laughs about the unexpected incidents that happened on their journey. Laura is looking forward to going back to the office for a visit to share all her vivid experiences and new ideas with her employees. The children are a little upset that they couldn't capture every moment as usual while being on an all-offline holiday. When they get back home and enter their apartment, the children immediately race to their devices, activate their digital worlds and avatars, “seeing the places they visited in person with new eyes and memories”.

4.3 Scenario 3: Never-Ending Relationship “The Digital Connection”

Max, Eva, Lukas, Alex and Nick got to know one other online due to long lasting football and Formula 1 battles they have been playing on their PlayStations. “Being in those games feels for them like diving into a good book. You are captivated by the story and its characters, not wanting it to stop”. As they live all over Europe, they have not met each other in-person before. Over the last couple of years, their attention shifted to one of the Metaverse’ virtual spaces. They appreciate the “immersive experiences where you can find yourself within a story”. Each space can be designed on its own. This is “where they got to know each other, different brands and other people even better”. The places they traveled to virtually, “are spaces that someone else, maybe a metaverse designer from a destination, hotel, attraction or other brand created for them”.

Spending a lot of time together in daily life, the friends decided that they finally want to meet in person. “Everyone is a little bit frightened, as they are not used to a face-to-face interaction”. From switching on their devices within seconds, it was easy to book flights and trains. The destination is clear. They want to see their favorite racetrack, Monaco. All planning is happening in a sophisticated and creative way within virtual spaces. “Therefore, the metaverse starts stoking a lot of joy already early in the travel process.”

“Due to all the games they played and movies watched, they think they know all the secret places of that destination”. “The big difference however was, that the digital journey involved no risk.” Additionally, their virtual trips to Monaco did not “degrade their environmental footprint”, aligning with their values for a sustainable life which is very important to them. They were able to “experience dangerous adventures in this virtual replications, challenges where they would not have been able to accomplish physically”. While in reality, “visiting certain sights can come with barriers.”

Arriving in Monaco, meeting each other “in person feels fundamentally different”. They are used to each other’s avatars, a form of presenting oneself in the way one desires to be. At the same time, the IRL meeting experience is very different “due to all the multisensory impressions”. The group of friends recognize their personalities in a new way. Due to their intense virtual engagement beforehand, the friends feel this “strong connection to each other, as well as to the place itself, the locals residents and businesses”, a strange feeling of familiarity, while actually never having been there physically before. “Everyone moves around the space in a very conscious way and knows exactly where to go, even if the Formula 1 track is somewhat different in reality”. When coming back home, the friends implement their digital memorabilia into their virtual spaces, which reminds them every time of the physical travel experience they had shared. The constant and profound memories trigger their wish to visit the destination again.

5 Conclusion and Implications

5.1 Discussion

This study’s aim was to explore the novel concept of never-ending tourism and develop potential future scenarios for 2030. Having taken a look into the much-anticipated metaverse [4], the tourism industry has the potential to truly integrate physical and virtual realms [23] into a cyclical never-ending engagement and experience of a place, an attraction or a destination.

The three distinct scenarios that emerged in this study indicate that never-ending tourism may have different intensity levels of ICTs throughout the pre-travel, during and post-travel stages. The first scenario “The digital companion” indicates the presence of technology permeating all areas of life, including home, work and travel. Travel is as an extension of life, and life is an extension of travel. Through virtual assistants, virtual tools and mixed realities, one’s everyday life and travel are interconnected with information, managed seamlessly and experienced as an on-going integration.

The second scenario “The digital escape” represents a highly technology-facilitated everyday life, while the physical travel is seen as a preserved enclave that represents an escapism from technology for a change. This scenario is from the first one, yet consistent with previous studies [e.g. 27, 28], supporting the need for intentional and desired disconnection as a choice for on-site travel. Everyday life and work realities toward 2030 are expected to become more technology-enabled. Besides its many noted advantages, travel may be seen as one of the few remaining spaces to afford escapism, immersion and a reversal of everyday by offering an opportunity for disconnection and digital detox [28] from an intensely-technology led life.

In the third scenario “The digital connection”, a future 2030 reality is painted, in which social connections are formed in and through virtual spaces (e.g. e-sports, games and gamified virtual spaces). Physical meetings and travel thereby becomes an add-on to the primary experience that is taking place in the virtual space. Recent studies on video gaming confirm the role that virtual space experiences play in the intention to visit physical destinations [29]. This scenario points to a metaverse reality in priorities are shifted. Virtual spaces and digital twins dominate while physical attractions and destinations might become a natural extension thereof.

What all three scenarios, while distinct from one another, have in common is that highly developed virtual offers, assistants, solutions and spaces become a dominant extension of physical travel. Previously, ICTs might have served the purpose to operationally assist, enable, empower and enhance different travel stages and experiences on-site [30]. This study shows goes beyond these technology-enhanced tourist experiences [30] and shows that in the next decade, the virtual experience is expected to mature significantly and becomes both, an extension and an experience on its own. We are on the verge to shift from technology-enhanced tourism experiences to integrated never-ending tourism experiences.

Travelling the real world will become more and more exclusive, valuable and expensive than its virtual counterpart. Therefore, the inspirational pre-booking phase is gaining in importance. Organisations and brands will succeed that have strategies for both realms – the physical and the virtual. Overall, there is going to be a customer segment that desire spatial distance, want to escape and immerse themselves into real-life travel experiences. At the same time, an entirely new generation of people may not understand the concept of getting on an airplane to go see new places, when all can be experienced in the metaverse from the comfort of one’s home. This shift will be determined by the development of metaverse platforms that are faster, cheaper, more sustainable, and by the year 2030, more accessible. For this reason, the virtually immersive experience that this medium allows can be seen as a new form of sustainable and accessible travel. People will be able to experience travel regardless of space, time, financial resources, political restrictions or own physical abilities.

It is a new reality of imagination to teleport oneself mentally into a new world, only seen through books and movies today. The metaverse is a new medium to cater for that need. The digital twin reconstruction of certain real-world locations will enable travelers to visit a variety of places, engage with their history, local people, religions and traditions. Additionally, through virtual spaces, natural scenery and cultural attractions can be preserved when at risk and reconstructed from the past when no longer there. Thus, never-ending tourism is not only an integrated experience in which travel becomes part of everyday life; it also encompasses a type of time travel that allows us to gaze into the past and the future.

5.2 Implications for Tourism Practice and Future Research

Several practical implications unfold for tourism designers and destination management organizations. Considering post-covid and sustainability considerations, attractive virtual tourism offers will be essential to any integrated destination marketing and management strategy. The participation in the metaverse will be critical, especially when considering traveler needs and demands with regards to special needs, accessibility, cost of traveling, personal restrictions, or sustainability and mobility concerns.

The goal of never-ending tourism is not to substitute physical travel or the destination, but rather to complement and extend its offer, and to render it ‘experienceable’ at all times in the virtual space. For tourism and technology businesses, this study’s scenarios imply the possibility for new business models and solutions that tap into the representation of tourism offers in mixed realities. For instance, memorabilia through multisensory VR glasses could be early prototypes tapping into mixed reality of travel that never ends [6, 23, 31]. The key direction of never-ending tourism is a new way of engaging customers in a cyclical experience through an integrated multi-media and multi-reality approach. Most importantly, the engagement, interactions and relationship with the traveler are not completed after post-travel operational transactions (e.g. reviews, ratings) stage, but extend experientially into everyday life. The experience in never-ending tourism is not insular but embedded into everyday life in a meaningful way.

For tourism research, the metaverse, and particularly, the concept of never-ending tourism is just at the starting point of conceptual and empirical research. This study is thus not without limitations. Contextually, the study was conducted in summer 2022, after a global pandemic and at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. A time when travel became unsafe and expensive, which might have influenced the experts’ estimations of 2030 and thus the emerged scenario results. In 2022, a lot of venture capital is currently flowing into the advancement of VR, AR and Metaverse applications and platforms. A year from now, the scenarios for 2030 could vary. Furthermore, the interviews were conducted individually with each expert online. Face-to-face or virtual focus groups could potentially lead to a more extensive and co-created image of the concept and scenarios. Although the experts themselves are travelers, the research questions would be fruitful to be examined purely from a customer's perspective. How do travelers perceive the potential and possibilities of never-ending tourism? This came clearly from an expert’s statement: “Never-ending tourism sounds exhausting. Sometimes we simply want inner peace by staying at home on our couch.”

This study opened both the discourse and empirical exploration of never-ending tourism as a distinct phenomenon that exceeds existing focused studies on AR, VR, MR and technology-enhanced tourism experiences [30]. The study contributes to recent metaverse studies in the tourism context [4]. While the metaverse holds applicability to many industries, the particularities of the never-ending tourism with its multi-phasic nature of crossing from everyday life to extraordinary consumption contexts is worth further exploring. In particular, examining never-ending tourism in relation to accessibility in specific tourism sectors (e.g. heritage, visitor attractions, museums) is suggested for further research. Moreover, researching new tourism business models that focus on closing the loop between the post-travel stage and the next pre-travel stage are of interest to understand how long-term customer engagement, relationship and brand loyalty can be successfully maintained in the virtual space.