Virtual Reality Mapping: IT Tools for the Divide between Knowledge and Action in Tourism
Cooper Malcolm and Neil MacNeil

Advances in telecommunication technologies are dramatically transforming spatial relationships in tourism, at every scale from local to global. In one such transformation, the Internet has increasingly become a popular medium for marketing the products of industries like tourism. This paper investigates the potential of virtual reality tools over the Internet for the next stage of tourism marketing and the current constraints on the full realization of such potential. Through an examination of the advantages of the Internet as a marketing tool and the characteristics of the tourism industry, it is suggested that the use of virtual reality via this medium is likely to become very important for marketing tourism in the near future. The paper analyses the main Internet applications in tourism marketing and explores the key strategic issues in the implementation of Internet tourism marketing via virtual reality, backing this up with an online survey of Virtual Reality professionals’ attitudes and comments on its use in tourism marketing.

Keywords: virtual reality, tourism marketing, spatial relationships, panography.