Tourist eXperience and Use of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Metaverse: A Literature Review

Tourist experience (TX) is considered a specification of the customer experience directly associated with the tourism industry. Researchers agree that the tourist experience begins before the trip with preparations and extends during and after it, with memories. Technologies like virtual or augmented reality and, recently, the metaverse promise to revolutionize the tourist experience, considering immersive virtual or hybrid experiences with physical elements superimposed on real spaces. Considering these elements, we conducted an exploratory review that shows us that aspects of tourism are addressed with the use of virtual reality, augmented reality, and/or metaverse in these experiences. We define a review protocol with five stages, and established the following research questions (i) In what type of tourism were virtual reality, augmented reality, and metaverse used to intervene in the tourist experience? (ii) What aspects of the tourist experience were addressed using virtual reality, augmented reality, and metaverse? and (iii) How was the tourist experience evaluated using virtual reality, augmented reality, and metaverse? The search was performed using five representative databases. Among the results obtained, articles were found that use virtual reality, augmented reality, and the metaverse to create new immersive experiences in tourism in general and in specific tourism, such as heritage, thematic, and outdoor activities, among others. We also found studies addressing different aspects of the tourist experience, such as marketing as a first approach, the management of the trip itself, and purchase intention. In future work, we consider perform a systematic literature review and develop user experience evaluation guidelines.