Prospects and challenges of virtual reality adoption for destination marketing
N. Muna, A.K. Murti & S. Hidayat
Politeknik APP Jakarta, South Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia
K. Soyun
Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
A. Yusriana
Universitas Dian Nuswantoro, Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia
ABSTRACT: Virtual Reality (VR) is a cutting-edge technology that has been widely adopted for promotional purposes.
In tourism industry, VR is favored due to its interactivity characteristics on delivering experience of tourist destination. The objective of this research is to explore the prospects and challenges of VR adoption for destination marketing. This study is a qualitative research in which the data are collected through observation and in-depth interview with 3 informants, i.e. a virtual reality maker, an advertising agency, and a traveler. The result indicates that VR as destination promotional tools is evolving in number and types of virtual reality formats that have been used, e.g. 3D image, application and 360° video. It offers different visualization and effectiveness in capturing users’ attention. However, VR as promotional tools faces several challenges in terms of cost, system development, visualization, and creativity as a package of tourist destination marketing.1 INTRODUCTION
Virtual Reality (VR) has been extensively discussed and developed for tourism industry over the years (Guttentag 2010, Huang et al. 2013, Martins et al. 2017, Tussyadiah et al. 2018, Williams & Hobson 1995). In Indonesia, VR has gained massive attention since academics and practitioners have recently adopted VR for destination promotional purposes (Hari & Hendrati 2018, Lengkong et al. 2017). The development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has arrived to the era of interactivity between destination and travelers that possibly substitute tourism experiences (Guttentag 2010, Huang et al.
2013). Moreover, VR has powerful effect on simulating actual situation and tasks that incrementally provide an accurate control of the state experienced by its users (Innocenti 2017). It also provides opportunity for mass virtual visitation to actual tourism destination (Tussyadiah et al. 2018).There are numerous researches on the adoption of VR for destination marketing focusing their research on visit intention (Aluri 2017, Huang et al. 2013, Tussyadiah et al. 2018) and emotional effects of VR adoption (Debbabi et al. 2013). Although VR proved to have effect on visit intention, there are some discussions on how VR influences virtual affective and conative image during the adoption process (Hyun & O’Keefe 2012).
The idea is dealing with the advanced technology that is able to create imaginary worlds that resemble the real world (Gutierrez et al. 2008). In addition, VR enables its users to transport to a virtual environment and experience it as if it was real; the evolving features of VR comes with multi-sensory virtual system where several senses such as visual (sight), auditory (hearing), and tactile (haptic) are stimulated at the same time to present “real experience” in virtual environment (Gutierrez et al. 2008, Martins et al. 2017).
Moreover, VR evolves to some extent that includes olfactory (smelling) and gustatory (tasting). Thus, the users may engage in rich experiences that enhance the level of connectivity and interaction with the users (Barnes et al. 2015). The main goal of VR can be seen from physical and psychological points of view; immersion and presence. VR is a closed computer system consisting of software and hardware that create immersive physical environment which allows interaction between human and computer. Simply, immersion is dealing with the physical configuration that user may interface when using VR application. Meanwhile, presence is related to the psychological aspects of the users’ state of consciousness. It can refer to “telepresence” to describe the feeling of being in virtual environment (Gutierrez et al.
2008, Hyun & O’Keefe 2012, Muhanna 2015).The advancement of VR has incrementally changed the way destination marketing practices nowadays; people adopt it for several reasons such as assessing real-life brand value (Barnes et al. 2015), enhancing virtual brand image (Hyun & O’Keefe 2012), and proposing experiential marketing strategies (Martins et al. 2017). Meanwhile, the adoption of VR for destination marketing is related to promote place-based marketing that enables travelers to experience the virtual view of the scenery and feelings as they were already at the tourist destination. This paper provides an insight of the future adoption of VR and its gaps for promotional tools of destination marketing in Indonesia. The use of VR for promotional purposes has entered its early stage of Indonesia tourism destination; besides its hypes in providing informative and entertaining new media for promotion tools, VR may lack in several areas such as the affective and conative effect on its adoption.
2 METHODS
The objectives of this research is to explore prospects and challenges of VR for destination marketing. Qualitative approach using in-depth interview and experiment was administered to investigate the current trend and deficiency of VR adoption for destination marketing in Indonesia. In-depth interview involved intensive individual interview with a small number of respondents to explore their perspectives on a certain idea or situation. It was used to obtain detailed information about a person’s thought and behaviors regarding new issues in-depth. This technique covered the “how” and “why”.
In doing so, several qualified informants were selected according to their expertise and qualification related to the topic. The informants were Virtual Reality maker (Glugu Creative), Visual Design Creative (Digini.co), and a traveler. Glugu Creative was established by communication visual design academicians and practitioners in Semarang, Central Java.
They have been making VR application partnering with several private and public stakeholders. Meanwhile, Digini.co provides visual design including VR content specialized in advertising purposes. Meanwhile, the traveler (Yuki) is Paper-Backer founder, and travel blogger based in Semarang. The traveler was selected to gain insight on the users’ perspective towards the VR technology adoption. The interview was 45-90 minutes covering some questions related to introduction of VR, characteristics, benefits, VR creation process, the powerful effect of VR, adoption of VR especially in destination marketing, prospect of VR for future development and adoption, current situation of VR adoption in Indonesia, prospect of VR for marketing tools, and challenging things of VR adoption in Indonesia.Experiment was continued by in-depth interview with informant for the traveler. VR video promotion is shown to the informant and the informant was interviewed for about 40-60 minutes to give the details of feelings and thought after viewing destination promotional VR video. The data will be transcribed and analyzed accordingly relevant to the topics.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the observation and in-depth interviews, there are several findings in terms of prospects and challenge of VR adoption for destination marketing in Indonesia. First section discussed about VR adoption in Indonesia for destination marketing, the characteristics of VR for promotional purposes, and challenges in VR adoption for marketing tools.
3.1 Vitual reality adoption in Indonesia
VR is categorized as new and growing multimedia technology in Indonesia. It was first introduced around 2015 which is popularized by gaming application (PokemonGo) and gaming industry like Nintendo. It was widely used in several industries after Oculus Rift got released in the following years. Ministry of Tourism is one of pioneers in Indonesia which adopted VR for destination marketing. Ministry of Tourism exhibited Wonderful Indonesia project in form of VR at World Travel Market (WTM), London.
Based on online observation regarding the adoption of VR in destination marketing, there were several practices of tourism promotion tools using VR in the past 5 years as listed below.
Table 1. Virtual reality for Indonesian destination marketing.
Year Virtual Reality Technology
2018 Virtual Reality Jogjakarta, Solo, Semarang (Joglose- mar) In 360° Video 4K
Travel Vlogger Documentation (Sentani, Air Terjun Padas Awu, Pantai Watu Leter, Gedung Songo, Museum Keris, Prambanan) Travel Agent (Lemukutan)
2017 Minahasa Ethnic Dance Virtual Reality 360° video Bali Virtual Tour Guide application
North Sulawesi introduction Android-based Virtual Reality application
Sheraton Bali Kuta Experience VR Video First Person View (FPV) virtual 3D application for Pantai Lakban Ratatotok
Wonderful Indonesia Virtual Reality 360° video Riau Island
Wonderful Indonesia Virtual Reality 360° video Banyuwangi
Wonderful Indonesia Makassar in 360° video
(Continued)
Table 1. (Cont.)
Year Virtual Reality Technology
Virtual 3D Museum BRI
Virtual Reality Reef Scene Alor
Travel Vlogger documentation (Bali, Lombok, Ana- mbas, Raja Ampat, Makassar, Dusun Bambu Bandung, Dunia Fantasi, Taman Begonia, Farmhouse, Flores, Malang)
2016 Wonderful Indonesia Virtual Reality Promotion
Video at Air Asia Travel 2016, Eastern Plaza, Tawau, Malaysia
360° video VR Surabaya City
Wonderful Indonesia - Jakarta in in 360° video
Wonderful Indonesia - Bali in in 360° video
2015 Wonderful Indonesia Virtual Reality Promotion Video at World Travel Market (WTM), London Interactive Virtual Museum
2014 None
VR was first introduced in 1963 by Sutherland through his Ph.D. dissertation and has evolved tremendously nowadays (Muhanna 2015). In Indonesia, VR has been adopted for tourism promotion in the last 5 years in many forms, i.e. 360° video, 3D, game, and Android-based applications. Each type of VR formats offers different effects and technical production hardware and software.
3D (three-dimensional) VR is described as computer-generated 3D environment that uses stereoscopic 3D displays, both 3D graphics and 3D imaging, that offer spatial and immersive interaction (Guttentag 2010, Huang et al. 2013, Marasco et al. 2018).Meanwhile, 360° video is a photography technique which portrayed a borderless and seamless photo effect from any angle. It doesn’t produce 3D effect, hence with the help of head-mounted display (HMD), 360° VR video takes its users to be in reality as it shows in the video. It mixes virtual and reality at the same dimension and times. Moreover, it allows syncretism between photographic technique techniques and VR. Therefore, 3D image and 360° video could be included as VR if they are incorporated with wearable devices as head-mounted display (HMD) to enforce the visual, immersive, and interactive effects (Marasco et al. 2018, Putra et al. 2018).
3.2 Characteristic of virtual reality
VR is computer representations of the real world; based on in-depth interview with VR maker, design visual designer, and traveler, VR is the next big thing in destination marketing field. It offers several characteristics that perfectly fit for destination promotional tools as follows:
3.2.1 Virtual experiential marketing
“in virtual reality, we can be part of the world and control the environment with our eye movement for example to choose certain option, to turn our head left and right and look around us, the point of virtual reality is bringing ourselves to the virtual world we created” (Glugu)
Based on the interview, interactivity is the key point of VR, experiencing the virtual worlds that resemble the reality, and that gives users the ability to interact with and modify the virtual world (Muhanna 2015). The perception of interactivity increases the telepresence as it provides users with an environment to interact and create a feeling of presence (Hyun & O’Keefe 2012, Williams & Hobson 1995).
The essential part of VR as a promotional tool is the experience that takes us to the real destination. VR is one kind of virtual experiential marketing that offers involvement of five dimensions which are sense, interaction, flow, pleasure, and community. The interactivity between user and computer-stimulated sensory experience leads to mental model of “telepresence” (Chen et al. 2008, Li et al. 2001).
3.2.2 Immersivevisualization
VR involves users to be part of the computer-generated environment or virtual environment, as the informant said:
“VR is fully computer-generated reality that we model, we create and we would like user to experience nearly the same as the world present it......................................................... I
said nearly because we need to re-create.... make a modelling of the reality to be virtual...so, precision is important” (Glugu)
In addition, informant for traveler shows positive feedback after simple experiment using VR devices (VR Box) in viewing Wonderful Indonesia 360° video in Bali. The video duration is 3.09 minutes, mostly showing the life in Bali. He said:
“Woooww,,,, I'm mesmerized!!!! I can see everything around me,,,,, the road, the people, the car, the food,,,,,,, I feel like I am in Bali,,, the girl beside me is so real” - Yuki
VR video exhibits vividness to its users since it offers visualization components such as 3D image, visual acuity (resolution), and a look around capability. The immersion is created through high-quality visualization (Williams & Hobson 1995). Regarding VR formats mentioned above, the greater the quality, the more realistic the experience.
3.2.3 Attentionandrecall
“................................... we enjoy VR for ourselves, like
for example video 360°, VR pull us to the video and take us to certain location in part of the world, the video talk itself, especially advertising video that has been made seriously to persuade people, with VR, the video get fully attention from user and not only that, people are involved in the video ”(Digini.co)
VR is the most appropriate display when trying to evoke physiological response. Moreover, VR creates “novelty effect” as the users valuing the uniqueness of the experience more than their own environment (Higuera-Trujillo et al. 2017).
The effectiveness of VR as a promotional tool can be measured from users’ attention and recall regarding the video, during 3.09 minutes of experiment, Yuki was very attentive to watch the video from the beginning to the end. At the end of experiment, he could retell the story line of the video and mention the details about the video as he said follows:
“..... I can see the beach, two foreigners boy and
girl, a pool, rice field as I was in a car, the dancer, clear sky...although it’s slow for me but it’s relaxing. ”
Since VR is enjoyed by putting VR device close to our eyes, users extensively pay full attention to the video. More importantly, VR potentially captures user’s attention which leads to promotional effectiveness; users’ visual attention can be affected by the viewing task and the amount of time allowed for viewing (Li et al. 2016).
3.3 Prospect of VRfor destination marketing
In tourism, experience is the currency for the business. The main reason tourists make times and itinerary if they visit tourist destination is because they want to explore and get the experience. However, Indonesia is rich in culture with hidden gems of tourist destinations where tourists need to explore. Therefore, VR takes its place as a new marketing tool to get into potential customers and offers customer to experience it at anywhere and anytime.
Based on the observation, the technological improvement and ubiquitousness of VR has reached many tourism stakeholders that have already adopted VR as marketing tools, i.e. travel agent, travel blogger, and government. People are more tech savvy and aggressive in promoting tourist destination.
3.4 Challenges of VR for destination marketing
Although VR undeniably offers fascinating characteristics for marketing tools, however, there are several challenges that need to be addressed
3.4.1 Cost
In advertising, to produce high-quality video that is rich in visual cues and compelling story line basically requires high investment. The technology is available to be used; however, the investment to adopt and use that technology is high.
3.4.2 Competentdeveloper
Although the technology is available, competent VR makers are quite few in number, especially VR in terms of 3D modeling, application, etc. It requires special effects and careful re-modeling the real world to the virtual world.
3.4.3 Visualization and creativity
The most important thing in adopting VR as a promotional tool is the ability of the video to create dramatic effects to the audience instead of the interaction effect. Dramatic effect is related to how powerful the visualization and how compelling the story lines are offered to the audience to capture their attention.
4 CONCLUSION
VR is the next big thing as marketing tools for promoting tourism industry in Indonesia. VR has powerful impact on physical and psychological effects on how users sense the world. In Indonesia, VR has countered several interfaces in presenting tourist destination. However, the cost of VR production is high because it requires powerful visualization and compelling story lines to capture user’s attention. Besides, the competent developers who understand the system development and creation are considered low in Indonesia. The need to collaborate between visual designer and program designer is essential.
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