As travellers increasingly seek authentic and emotionally resonant experiences, extended reality (XR) technologies provide a compelling bridge between inspiration and conversion. Igniting travel anticipation by transporting visitors to a 3D digital environment, interactive virtual destination previews present an innovative approach to multi-sensory engagement.
As travellers increasingly seek authentic and emotionally resonant experiences, extended reality (XR) technologies provide a compelling bridge between inspiration and conversion. Igniting travel anticipation by transporting visitors to a 3D digital environment, interactive virtual destination previews present an innovative approach to multi-sensory engagement. The integration of gamification also presents a potent avenue for fostering deeper participation and memorable interactions, particularly when targeting younger demographics. Our panel of destination experts sees immersive content and XR technologies as an emerging trend that enhances brand discovery, recognising that while the technology currently isn't capable of reaching large audience volumes, it will nevertheless have a substantial impact on enhancing destination storytelling in the future as the technology matures.
With the global XR market projected to reach $450 billion by 2030, DMOs find themselves at the threshold of a transformative moment for destination marketing. Ongoing XR advancements, from tech giants Google, Meta, Snap and Apple, will redefine top-of-funnel discovery and build immediate visitor connections with destinations through highly immersive and informative visitor touchpoints. In doing so, these developments represent a two-directional approach:
Head-mounted displays (HMDs): Wearable headsets that enable ultra-immersive experiences through presenting digital content directly to the wearer's eyes.
Smart glasses: A more discreet integration of XR into daily life, reminiscent of sunglasses.
The most advanced HMDs include Apple’s Vision Pro, a "spatial computer" offering intuitive interaction with apps in a limitless canvas, and Meta Quest, which continues to refine its accessibility, price and features to appeal to an audience beyond immersive gaming. Taking a dual strategy to tap into the XR market, Meta's approach also extends to smart glasses through a collaboration with Ray-Ban, prioritising hands-free communication and content sharing for immediate visitor traction, as well as Orion as prototype augmented reality (AR) glasses. Similarly, Snap's Spectacles are evolving into advanced AR computers with integrated AI for spatial understanding. Google's significant re-entry into the smart glasses market further underscores the shifted consumer landscape since the discontinuation of Google Glass a decade ago, positioning context-aware wearable devices as the next major digital disruptor. With this focus on XR from the leading technology companies, DMOs are starting to take note and are tracking the potential of this technology for enhanced brand discovery with a keen eye.
The power of XR in destination marketing lies in its ability to transcend the limitations of static imagery. Where conventional marketing relies on the imagination to fill gaps between aspiration and reality, XR offers visceral, sensory experiences that create lasting emotional impressions. This "try before you buy" capability proves particularly valuable in B2B marketing scenarios, demonstrating ambience, evoking emotions and highlighting unique selling propositions in ways that traditional 2D experiences simply cannot convey. In this manner, leveraging XR enables DMOs to support the delivery of virtual fam trips and relationship building among a wider number of partners than would be feasible through in-person travel, with the technology driving a multiplier effect in destination exposure.
The impact of immersive storytelling is more powerful than simply being a virtual replica of a destination. XR enables DMOs to craft narratives that engage multiple senses simultaneously, creating "emotional memory anchors" that persist long after the virtual experience ends. This multi-sensory approach proves especially effective for destinations to differentiate themselves from a broader consideration set, triggering a highly evocative experience with extremely strong recall value to create a lasting connection with the destination. Similarly, the technology expands the ability for destinations to be accessible to those who otherwise might be unable to visit due to physical abilities or cost, while XR provides a solution that maintains visitor engagement at popular attractions year-round through virtual experiences that complement physical visits.
The German National Tourist Board (GNTB) is one of the DMOs most active in experimenting with XR technology's potential. Building upon its "Nature Experiences in Germany" app for the Oculus and PICO, GNTB's UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany Meta Quest app showcases the country's rich cultural diversity through captivating and interactive 360-degree panoramas of the 54 German UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Beyond stunning aesthetics, visitors can delve deeper into each location with comprehensive information and test their knowledge in engaging quizzes. The app's multiplayer mode further enhances the user experience by enabling people to meet and explore together virtually. At the same time, embedding direct access to all of GNTB's media channels, including their website and social media channels, creates a holistic digital gateway to Germany's cultural treasures.
As exemplified by GNTB, XR experiences can be used by DMOs to share compelling stories about lesser-known destinations, offering prospective visitors intimate encounters with unique cultural heritage and natural beauty. In democratising access to destination experiences, XR enables a global audience to be reached who might never have considered visiting such locations, despite their interest in similar but more popular locations. By accurately recreating destinations in a digital environment, supported by the simplification of filming spatial content without specialised equipment, XR experiences are increasingly supporting the establishment of appropriate expectations, enhancing trust among audiences. This authentic representation proves particularly crucial as travellers become more discerning in their booking behaviours.
Personalised Guidance and Translation
Beyond XR's storytelling capabilities, advanced AI capabilities are supporting personalised, context-aware in-destination guidance and real-time language translation. This significantly boosts visitor experiences by adapting to individual traveller preferences. With the demand for personalised experiences in tourism having reached critical mass, and approximately four in five travellers now expecting individualised interactions, this creates both an opportunity and an imperative for destinations to deliver personal engagement at scale.
Along the same vein, cultural and linguistic adaptation enables destinations to present themselves through culturally appropriate lenses that resonate with specific demographics. This capability proves particularly valuable for international marketing campaigns, where virtual experiences can be tailored to align with different cultural expectations, communication styles and travel preferences. Dynamically adjusting everything from visual presentations to interactive elements, virtual experiences are designed to feel relevant and engaging to each visitor.
With advanced interactivity, XR experiences provide destinations with valuable data about visitor preferences and engagement levels, connecting brand discovery with in-destination experiences. This data collection enables destinations to track the complete visitor journey and gain valuable insights into their decision-making rationales. This feedback loop becomes particularly powerful when further integrated with traditional tourism analytics.
Barriers to Widespread Adoption
Despite its transformative potential, XR technology faces significant obstacles that limit its adoption for destination marketing. Research indicates that 38% of XR professionals regard the price of HMDs as one of the biggest barriers to mass consumer adoption, while technical complexity (34%) and unfamiliar user experiences (20%) compound the XR adoption challenge. At the current stage of development, the lack of compatibility between different devices also raises significant questions about the development of spatial experiences and the necessary investment required for designing immersive content experiences for specific devices.
Despite these obstacles, the primary barrier remains the hardware challenge, with HMDs continuing to be perceived as clunky, heavy and uncomfortable. While HMDs have a fair way to go in their development before they achieve mainstream acceptance, smart glasses are rapidly approaching the point of widespread adoption. Nevertheless, until smart glasses perfectly resemble ordinary sunglasses in terms of weight, comfort and social acceptability, the technology will likely remain confined to specialised applications. This hardware limitation creates a paradox for destination marketers: while the technology offers unprecedented engagement opportunities, the delivery mechanism itself may deter the very audiences they seek to reach.
This paradox is compounded by a lack of content developed for XR platforms. Here at the Digital Tourism Think Tank, we expect these barriers to become less of a concern in the coming years as awareness, pricing and user experience improve. In particular, the current lack of content will be fairly quickly overcome with VisionOS and Android XR representing a highly accessible and familiar development environment, comparable to the intuitive nature of iOS and Android OS. As an example of the significance of such standardised operating systems, the number of available apps grew to over 65,000 within a year following the launch of the App Store in 2008, representing 1.5 billion downloads. While the growth of spatial content is likely to be less dramatic, the continuity of having standardised operating systems will significantly reduce barriers to entry, making the development of complex 3D and immersive content more accessible than ever before, fostering an ecosystem poised for innovation.
The path forward requires a gradual integration approach that recognises current limitations while building toward future possibilities. As hardware becomes more comfortable and affordable, XR technology will likely transition from a premium marketing tool to a strategic component of destination marketing strategies. The question for destination marketers is how quickly they can prepare for this evolution while navigating the current landscape of technical and economic constraints.
Augmented Reality as the Gateway to XR Adoption
Before destinations embrace the full spectrum of XR technologies, AR serves as a crucial entry point that bridges the gap between traditional digital marketing and immersive experiences. Unlike experiences that require specialised hardware, AR applications can be deployed through smartphones and tablets, eliminating the primary barrier to entry that hampers broader XR adoption. This has broad application and development prospects, making it an ideal testing ground for destinations seeking to understand visitor engagement with immersive technologies.
AR's gamification potential represents one of its most compelling applications for destination marketing. Gamified AR applications can transform passive search behaviour into active exploration, encouraging visitors to discover hidden gems, complete educational challenges and engage more deeply with destination content. Studies comparing gamified and non-gamified experiences reveal that while gamification notably enhances the reward dimension of visitor engagement, its influence encompasses deeper educational outcomes, with a 30% increase in the duration of visitor interactions. This elevated engagement has a positive impact on place attachment, creating more meaningful connections between visitors and destinations as well as amplifying the marketing impact through the potential for such games to go viral.
The Slovenian Tourist Board's "Hike Safe" AR game personifies this approach in mainstream marketing by using Snapchat filters for playful top-of-funnel discovery. By educating Gen Z audiences about mountain safety in the Slovenian Alps, this innovative game transforms safety education into an engaging experience, where players navigate virtual mountain trails and are challenged to select the appropriate seasonal hiking equipment. This approach effectively tells the story of responsible hiking and seamlessly instils crucial safety knowledge in a modern, accessible way on a platform already popular with their target audience.
Despite the burgeoning potential presented by AR, successfully leveraging the broader range of XR technology in marketing critically hinges on alignment with the digital behaviours of target audiences. While XR offers undeniable opportunities for designing more engaging brand experiences and enhancing creativity, it's crucial to acknowledge that it will not boost engagement among all target audiences. Careful decisions will need to be taken to identify the right opportunities for experimenting in this emerging area to ensure brand alignment and deliver tangible value that enhances destination storytelling.
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As travellers increasingly seek authentic and emotionally resonant experiences, extended reality (XR) technologies provide a compelling bridge between inspiration and conversion. Igniting travel anticipation by transporting visitors to a 3D digital environment, interactive virtual destination previews present an innovative approach to multi-sensory engagement. The integration of gamification also presents a potent avenue for fostering deeper participation and memorable interactions, particularly when targeting younger demographics. Our panel of destination experts sees immersive content and XR technologies as an emerging trend that enhances brand discovery, recognising that while the technology currently isn't capable of reaching large audience volumes, it will nevertheless have a substantial impact on enhancing destination storytelling in the future as the technology matures.
With the global XR market projected to reach $450 billion by 2030, DMOs find themselves at the threshold of a transformative moment for destination marketing. Ongoing XR advancements, from tech giants Google, Meta, Snap and Apple, will redefine top-of-funnel discovery and build immediate visitor connections with destinations through highly immersive and informative visitor touchpoints. In doing so, these developments represent a two-directional approach:
Head-mounted displays (HMDs): Wearable headsets that enable ultra-immersive experiences through presenting digital content directly to the wearer's eyes.
Smart glasses: A more discreet integration of XR into daily life, reminiscent of sunglasses.
The most advanced HMDs include Apple’s Vision Pro, a "spatial computer" offering intuitive interaction with apps in a limitless canvas, and Meta Quest, which continues to refine its accessibility, price and features to appeal to an audience beyond immersive gaming. Taking a dual strategy to tap into the XR market, Meta's approach also extends to smart glasses through a collaboration with Ray-Ban, prioritising hands-free communication and content sharing for immediate visitor traction, as well as Orion as prototype augmented reality (AR) glasses. Similarly, Snap's Spectacles are evolving into advanced AR computers with integrated AI for spatial understanding. Google's significant re-entry into the smart glasses market further underscores the shifted consumer landscape since the discontinuation of Google Glass a decade ago, positioning context-aware wearable devices as the next major digital disruptor. With this focus on XR from the leading technology companies, DMOs are starting to take note and are tracking the potential of this technology for enhanced brand discovery with a keen eye.
The power of XR in destination marketing lies in its ability to transcend the limitations of static imagery. Where conventional marketing relies on the imagination to fill gaps between aspiration and reality, XR offers visceral, sensory experiences that create lasting emotional impressions. This "try before you buy" capability proves particularly valuable in B2B marketing scenarios, demonstrating ambience, evoking emotions and highlighting unique selling propositions in ways that traditional 2D experiences simply cannot convey. In this manner, leveraging XR enables DMOs to support the delivery of virtual fam trips and relationship building among a wider number of partners than would be feasible through in-person travel, with the technology driving a multiplier effect in destination exposure.
The impact of immersive storytelling is more powerful than simply being a virtual replica of a destination. XR enables DMOs to craft narratives that engage multiple senses simultaneously, creating "emotional memory anchors" that persist long after the virtual experience ends. This multi-sensory approach proves especially effective for destinations to differentiate themselves from a broader consideration set, triggering a highly evocative experience with extremely strong recall value to create a lasting connection with the destination. Similarly, the technology expands the ability for destinations to be accessible to those who otherwise might be unable to visit due to physical abilities or cost, while XR provides a solution that maintains visitor engagement at popular attractions year-round through virtual experiences that complement physical visits.
The German National Tourist Board (GNTB) is one of the DMOs most active in experimenting with XR technology's potential. Building upon its "Nature Experiences in Germany" app for the Oculus and PICO, GNTB's UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany Meta Quest app showcases the country's rich cultural diversity through captivating and interactive 360-degree panoramas of the 54 German UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Beyond stunning aesthetics, visitors can delve deeper into each location with comprehensive information and test their knowledge in engaging quizzes. The app's multiplayer mode further enhances the user experience by enabling people to meet and explore together virtually. At the same time, embedding direct access to all of GNTB's media channels, including their website and social media channels, creates a holistic digital gateway to Germany's cultural treasures.
As exemplified by GNTB, XR experiences can be used by DMOs to share compelling stories about lesser-known destinations, offering prospective visitors intimate encounters with unique cultural heritage and natural beauty. In democratising access to destination experiences, XR enables a global audience to be reached who might never have considered visiting such locations, despite their interest in similar but more popular locations. By accurately recreating destinations in a digital environment, supported by the simplification of filming spatial content without specialised equipment, XR experiences are increasingly supporting the establishment of appropriate expectations, enhancing trust among audiences. This authentic representation proves particularly crucial as travellers become more discerning in their booking behaviours.
Personalised Guidance and Translation
Beyond XR's storytelling capabilities, advanced AI capabilities are supporting personalised, context-aware in-destination guidance and real-time language translation. This significantly boosts visitor experiences by adapting to individual traveller preferences. With the demand for personalised experiences in tourism having reached critical mass, and approximately four in five travellers now expecting individualised interactions, this creates both an opportunity and an imperative for destinations to deliver personal engagement at scale.
Along the same vein, cultural and linguistic adaptation enables destinations to present themselves through culturally appropriate lenses that resonate with specific demographics. This capability proves particularly valuable for international marketing campaigns, where virtual experiences can be tailored to align with different cultural expectations, communication styles and travel preferences. Dynamically adjusting everything from visual presentations to interactive elements, virtual experiences are designed to feel relevant and engaging to each visitor.
With advanced interactivity, XR experiences provide destinations with valuable data about visitor preferences and engagement levels, connecting brand discovery with in-destination experiences. This data collection enables destinations to track the complete visitor journey and gain valuable insights into their decision-making rationales. This feedback loop becomes particularly powerful when further integrated with traditional tourism analytics.
Barriers to Widespread Adoption
Despite its transformative potential, XR technology faces significant obstacles that limit its adoption for destination marketing. Research indicates that 38% of XR professionals regard the price of HMDs as one of the biggest barriers to mass consumer adoption, while technical complexity (34%) and unfamiliar user experiences (20%) compound the XR adoption challenge. At the current stage of development, the lack of compatibility between different devices also raises significant questions about the development of spatial experiences and the necessary investment required for designing immersive content experiences for specific devices.
Despite these obstacles, the primary barrier remains the hardware challenge, with HMDs continuing to be perceived as clunky, heavy and uncomfortable. While HMDs have a fair way to go in their development before they achieve mainstream acceptance, smart glasses are rapidly approaching the point of widespread adoption. Nevertheless, until smart glasses perfectly resemble ordinary sunglasses in terms of weight, comfort and social acceptability, the technology will likely remain confined to specialised applications. This hardware limitation creates a paradox for destination marketers: while the technology offers unprecedented engagement opportunities, the delivery mechanism itself may deter the very audiences they seek to reach.
This paradox is compounded by a lack of content developed for XR platforms. Here at the Digital Tourism Think Tank, we expect these barriers to become less of a concern in the coming years as awareness, pricing and user experience improve. In particular, the current lack of content will be fairly quickly overcome with VisionOS and Android XR representing a highly accessible and familiar development environment, comparable to the intuitive nature of iOS and Android OS. As an example of the significance of such standardised operating systems, the number of available apps grew to over 65,000 within a year following the launch of the App Store in 2008, representing 1.5 billion downloads. While the growth of spatial content is likely to be less dramatic, the continuity of having standardised operating systems will significantly reduce barriers to entry, making the development of complex 3D and immersive content more accessible than ever before, fostering an ecosystem poised for innovation.
The path forward requires a gradual integration approach that recognises current limitations while building toward future possibilities. As hardware becomes more comfortable and affordable, XR technology will likely transition from a premium marketing tool to a strategic component of destination marketing strategies. The question for destination marketers is how quickly they can prepare for this evolution while navigating the current landscape of technical and economic constraints.
Augmented Reality as the Gateway to XR Adoption
Before destinations embrace the full spectrum of XR technologies, AR serves as a crucial entry point that bridges the gap between traditional digital marketing and immersive experiences. Unlike experiences that require specialised hardware, AR applications can be deployed through smartphones and tablets, eliminating the primary barrier to entry that hampers broader XR adoption. This has broad application and development prospects, making it an ideal testing ground for destinations seeking to understand visitor engagement with immersive technologies.
AR's gamification potential represents one of its most compelling applications for destination marketing. Gamified AR applications can transform passive search behaviour into active exploration, encouraging visitors to discover hidden gems, complete educational challenges and engage more deeply with destination content. Studies comparing gamified and non-gamified experiences reveal that while gamification notably enhances the reward dimension of visitor engagement, its influence encompasses deeper educational outcomes, with a 30% increase in the duration of visitor interactions. This elevated engagement has a positive impact on place attachment, creating more meaningful connections between visitors and destinations as well as amplifying the marketing impact through the potential for such games to go viral.
The Slovenian Tourist Board's "Hike Safe" AR game personifies this approach in mainstream marketing by using Snapchat filters for playful top-of-funnel discovery. By educating Gen Z audiences about mountain safety in the Slovenian Alps, this innovative game transforms safety education into an engaging experience, where players navigate virtual mountain trails and are challenged to select the appropriate seasonal hiking equipment. This approach effectively tells the story of responsible hiking and seamlessly instils crucial safety knowledge in a modern, accessible way on a platform already popular with their target audience.
Despite the burgeoning potential presented by AR, successfully leveraging the broader range of XR technology in marketing critically hinges on alignment with the digital behaviours of target audiences. While XR offers undeniable opportunities for designing more engaging brand experiences and enhancing creativity, it's crucial to acknowledge that it will not boost engagement among all target audiences. Careful decisions will need to be taken to identify the right opportunities for experimenting in this emerging area to ensure brand alignment and deliver tangible value that enhances destination storytelling.
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