I want to travel to the past! The role of creative style and historical reconstructions as antecedents of informativeness in a virtual visit to a heritage tourist destination

ABSTRACTVirtual visits are a particularly useful way to learn about heritage tourism destinations. This article examines three design variables (i.e. technology interface: web browser vs. virtual reality device; creative style of information: textual vs. pictorial; and presence of historical reconstructions: yes vs. no) of a virtual visit to identify their influence on perceived informativeness and intention to recommend a destination. We performed a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental factorial design with 116 Spanish tourists. We found that the presence of historical reconstructions especially improves informativeness when combined with extra textual information; and that if the visit is mediated by an immersive VR device, textual information cues influence intention to recommend more than do pictorial cues, but when the virtual visit is carried out using a less immersive technological interface, pictorial content has more influence on intention to recommend. Theoretical and managerial contributions are discussed.KEYWORDS: Virtual realitytourist destinationheritage tourisminformativenesseWOM AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the Giza Project at Harvard University for allowing us to use their actual virtual tour of the Tomb of Queen Meresankh III as a stimulus in our experimental design. We also thank Matterport for the technical support in manipulating the scenarios. As related research of this article, we want to acknowledge the conference paper Bigne, E., Ruiz, R., Curras, R. and Andreu, L. (2023). Travelling to the past. The impact of Virtual Reality on customer experience with heritage destinations. AIRSI 2023, The Metaverse Conference.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ID grant number: PID2019-111195RB-I00/ AEI / 10.13039/501100011033 0)