It was not until recently that we could imagine immersive technology's popularity would be raised and adaptability would reshape almost all businesses in the tourism landscape. Immersive technology has been a transition phenomenon from a traditional marketing strategy to a postmodern approach that encourages, motivates, and satisfies the potential consumers towards a particular tourism product or service. On the other hand, the tourism industry has been the hardest hit and most suffering sector due to the declaration of emergency measures such as travel bans which caused catastrophic consequences in the industry during the coronavirus pandemic. Hence, this chapter intends to present comprehensive reviews about the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry through conceptualizing and contextualizing the remarkable aspects of innovation, digitalization, and digital transformation using immersive technologies.
TopIntroduction
Tourism is a vital economic activity, particularly for emerging economies. Many developed or developing countries depend on tourism revenue to drive their economies. Tourism has grown rapidly and gradually (except the global pandemic COVID-19 period) over the past several decades (Yuce, 2021). Tourism significantly impacts overall economic growth as a major source of foreign exchange earnings that enhances livelihoods and improves citizens' living standards in developing and developed countries (Hidalgo, Martín-Barroso, Nuñez-Serrano, Turrión, & Velázquez, 2022). According to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), tourism is the third-largest industry which accounts for 7% of the global trade while creating a large portion of (one in ten jobs) employment worldwide (UNWTO, 2020). Yet, despite the increasing visiting number and expectations about overall improvement in the tourism industry by 10% during the post-corona era, tourism businesses feel competitive pressures to increase their productivity and efficiency while reducing operational costs.
On the other hand, besides natural disasters and political crises, pandemics and epidemics also negatively impact businesses, individuals, and societies. Suffice it to say that the novel COVID-19 has proved one more time that tourism is a highly sensitive industry, which is hardest hit one, towards the external harmful events such politic, economic crises, and disaster and pandemic (Gretzel et al., 2020; Hidalgo et al., 2022; Zhong, Sun, Law, & Li, 2021). Although the tourism industry faced challenges with the previous numerous disasters and pandemics, COVID-19 has caused more severe challenges due to the uncertain duration, magnitude, speed, and prevalence of the pandemic, particularly in the tourism industry, which relies on the mobilization of its consumers. UNWTO (2020) reports that tourism originated export revenue (between $910 billion and $1.2 Trillion) lost could reduce the global GDP by 1.5% to 2.8% in 2020. The impact of COVID-19 can be assessed by investigating from several dimensions to the tourism industry as a whole and from business, employees, and tourist perspectives. All these aspects are crucial to providing helpful strategies for all the shareholders in the tourism industry.
COVID-19 had a significant negative impact on the tourism industry (Gössling, Scott, & Hall, 2020; Karatepe, Saydam, & Okumus, 2021). One of the first and the most vulnerable effect of the COVID-19 was widespread business closures due to travel restrictions, strict lockdowns, and isolations during the coronavirus pandemics (T. Baum & Hai, 2020; Gössling et al., 2020; Karatepe et al., 2021; Ntounis, Parker, Skinner, Steadman, & Warnaby, 2021; Park, Kim, & Kim, 2020). In particular, as the duration and prevalence of the pandemic last in a longer period, its negative impact also gets more vulnerable to businesses of all sizes. The majority of the current studies report that the tourism industry is also suffering to respond and survive during the COVID-19 pandemics (Mao, He, Morrison, & Andres Coca-Stefaniak, 2020; Sharma, Shin, Santa-María, & Nicolau, 2021). COVID-19 put the businesses, whether small, medium, or large-sized enterprises, viability or sustainability at great risk in terms of mandatory closing the hotels and accommodations restaurants temporarily or permanently. According to recent studies, the consequences of the pandemics have been hurting the tourism-dependent country economies heavily. Hence, one of the most crucial elements that can protect the businesses' long-term survival requires several measures such as solidarity among business owners, tourism employees and their unions, and governmental support. A study suggests that organizations can attract tourists by offering more services with lower fees to ensure that the businesses survive pre and post COVID-19 pandemics (Lai & Wong, 2020; Neuburger & Egger, 2021; Ritchie & Jiang, 2019). Another approach that can help organizations confront economic-related concerns and hardship is transforming the classical business operation into a digital platform where businesses can serve year-round (Dantas et al., 2021).