Tourism and the metaverse: towards a widespread use of virtual travel?

The metaverse is gaining ground in the media landscape. While some people remain cautious or resistant to the idea, others see this technological evolution as an opportunity to develop new offers. Tourism is a sector that moves forward largely in line with information and communication technologies, it is therefore entirely relevant to look at how it could integrate this virtual universe.

And since the announcement of the creation of the Meta group by Mark Zuckerberg, this term has spread massively around the world. The metaverse can be defined as a set of virtual, persistent, shared spaces that are indexed in the real world and accessible via 3D interaction.So how could the metaverse take over tourism, a practice that requires physical travel?

Can tourism and technology work together?

There is a clear correlation between the development of tourism and that of technology; they always go hand in hand. Indeed, from the computerised reservation centres of the 1970s to the domestication of the Internet in the late 1990s, technology has always been used in tourism to develop new practices. The metaverse is part of this evolution of the Internet, which is using increasingly immersive technologies to offer phygital experiences, i.e. creating increasingly permeable boundaries between the real and the virtual.

Whether for museums, national parks or heritage sites, the health crisis also enabled many organisations to increase and sustain their use of technological tools to offer virtual reality tours. The Fly Over Zone application, as well as offering an exploration of World Heritage cultural sites, provides a digital restoration of damaged sites. Web giant Amazon launched “Amazon Explore”, allowing people to literally “travel the world, virtually”. This venture is an interactive live streaming service, which they say allows you to discover new places from your computer. Although this service is still in its infancy, with a beta version it is likely that these virtual tours will progress to offer even more immersive formats.

When it comes to tourism, Asia is a forerunner, with proposals that are very advanced, such as the “Seoul Metaverse” project, which aims to become the first major city in the world to enter the metaverse, with a tourist route reproducing the city's main sites. But it is in France that we find one of the most successful projects with MoyaLand, a virtual tourism universe, developed as a virtual and immersive artistic reproduction featuring a tourist office, museums, an airport and a historical centre where inhabitants and tourists can move around virtually via their avatars.

Other tourism stakeholders could follow suit, as according to the American company Gartner, in 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse. So how will people experience tourism in this virtual environment?

Using the metaverse to inspire travel

There are two main trends defining the tourism experience: the first is related to the process, with a transformation of the world into knowledge, the second is about the moment, with a focus on hedonism and the feeling of success. While by definition, tourism requires physical travel, there is a contradiction in the tourism experiences offered by the metaverse. The metaverse cannot replace physical travel, but can create the desire to travel.

Virtual reality is an immersive environment created using a technological device that provides the user with digitally created sensations such as sight, hearing, touch and even smell. To awaken these senses in the virtual tourism areas of the metaverse, users will therefore need to be equipped with visual, sound, haptic, tactile and olfactory devices. Besides acquisition costs, the use of these new devices calls into question the perception of the senses connecting humans to their environment.

By reproducing a tourism setting, the metaverse forms an entity composed of the device, the user who puts themselves in the shoes of a tourist, and the other spectators. Although the experience is virtual, the senses are indeed put to work by stimulating certain situations that are desired but not accessible at the time. Through immersion, the virtual reality headset or haptic sensors allow us to experience things that were previously intangible and to reconnect with the senses. Through an avatar, the metaverse user can embody a tourist by creating a virtual tour route, interacting with other avatars and consequently imagining how they feel, stimulating what Giacomo Rizzolatti calls mirror neurons.

Societal and environmental constraints

Whether imitated, reproduced or simulated, the fact remains that travel and holidays are tourism practices that provide a break from everyday life. These moments are also an opportunity for some to see their loved ones or to engage in activities that are difficult to do in the normal course of life. Observing animals on safari, discovering archaeological sites or practising a foreign language are activities that produce unique, essential bodily and spiritual sensations different from those produced virtually by metaverse devices.

Moreover, the metaverse, which is in itself a technological development of the Internet, is not yet complete. It requires financial investment and the construction of a regulatory framework to control user behaviour. For when Mark Zuckerberg expresses his desire to create a virtual and alternative world in which users can also travel, we must not lose sight of the fact that users' data will be put to use. And while some people see the metaverse as a solution to avoid flying and move towards sustainable tourism, the digital pollution it will create could well work against this “virtuous” form of tourism.

Although tourism in the metaverse will not be able to replace a tourism experience outside the home, some tourism professionals could use it to promote sites that are not easily accessible or are ignored by tourists, who can discover them virtually.