Virtual reality has become a more common phenomenon in both destination marketing and on-site experience. The recent challenges such as overtourism and the COVID-19 pandemic have created a pressing need to examine virtual tourism as an alternative to traditional travel. This conceptual article aims at clarifying virtual experience in tourism, discussing the main antecedents and outcomes of virtual experience, and proposing a conceptual model of virtual tourism experience. The review of the literature revealed that virtual experience in tourism is influenced by factors related to information, quality, technology acceptance, and affective involvement and has significant effects on tourists’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. This paper contributes to knowledge and practice by classifying the main groups of factors influencing virtual tourism experience, introducing the conceptual model, discussing opportunities for future research, and providing recommendations for tourism practitioners.

COVID-19 has significantly influenced tourism, including tourists’ and residents’ attitudes toward tourism. At the same time, attitudes and consumer confidence are important for economic recovery in the tourism sector. This study explores the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s attitudes toward tourism by analyzing time-series data on the number of COVID-19 positive cases, vaccinations, news sentiment, a total number of daily mentions of tourism, and the share of voice for positive and negative sentiment toward tourism. The applied data analysis techniques include descriptive analysis, visual representation of data, data decomposition into trend and cycle components, unit root tests, Granger causality test, and multiple time series regression. The results demonstrate that the COVID-19 statistics and media coverage have significant effects on interest in tourism in general, as well as the positive and negative sentiment toward tourism. The results contribute to knowledge and practice by describing the effects of the disease statistics on attitudes toward tourism, introducing social media sentiment analysis as an opportunity to measure positive and negative sentiment toward tourism, and providing recommendations for government authorities, destination management organizations, and tourism providers.

Sustainable practices are becoming increasingly important to tourists and hotel guests. As a result, destinations, hotels, and booking platforms are implementing eco-friendly practices and displaying sustainable badges to communicate their efforts to guests. While the use of sustainable badges increases the visibility of eco-friendly hotels, it is unclear whether they actually influence guests’ choices. This study aimed to explore the effects of the presence of sustainable badges and the awareness of sustainable practices on tourists’ attitudes and behavioral intentions using an experimental design. People who previously used a hotel-booking platform were randomly assigned to four hotel-booking scenarios with the manipulated presence of sustainable badges and awareness about sustainable practices on the website. The data analysis techniques included an analysis of variance, moderation, and a mediation analysis. The study’s results provided empirical evidence that the presence of a sustainable badge could have a positive impact on guests’ attitudes toward a hotel and intentions to book a hotel. These results contributed to the body of knowledge on the impact of sustainable practices, addressed an attitude–behavior gap between tourists’ attitudes and behavioral intentions, and provided valuable insights for destination management organizations, hotel managers, booking platforms, and policymakers interested in promoting sustainable tourism practices.

This article describes and interprets fan activities within the theme park space related to a particular fan object. It examines an evolving paradigm wherein the role of theme park visitors is changed. Rather than being perceived as observers of spectacles, they can participate and interact with the environment in new ways. An example of this is Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom (2012), an interactive role-playing quest and collector card game at Disney's Magic Kingdom Park in Florida. Fans participate in a variety of practices that have dynamically redefined theme park activities. Together, management, designers, and fans have cocreated and reconstructed the theme park experience as one of exploration and participation. Despite multiple levels of control, fans will likewise persist in engagement with activities (in park and online) that help shape and interrogate the theme park space.

Theme parks are sites of popular imagination and cultural touchstones. What the COVID-19 pandemic taught is that they are also compelling when closed. This article focuses on fannish activities exemplified by imaginative posts and sweding videos from #HomemadeDisney and others during the period when global Disney theme parks were closed. This hashtag became a virtual communal space, the site of anxiety and brand loyalty but also invention and creation. Through a textual analysis of these posts, it is possible to grasp participatory culture’s role in contemporary life, the value of affinity groups, the power of social media in brand co-creation, the shifting of fan invention techniques, and the role of influential consumers in inspiring others through creative communication. #Homemade projects exemplified the process of creating virtual homes even as so many remained quarantined in physical homes, with the theme park part of the concept of home.