Influencing wine tourists' decision-making with VR: The impact of immersive experiences on their behavioural intentions

Virtual Reality (VR) has proven to be an important contribution to tourists' decision-making regarding a destination. This fact can be determinant, especially when tourists face some social limitation or restriction that conditions their participation in tourism activities. Therefore, we aim to understand whether the possibility of experiencing immersive wine tourism activities can encourage future visits, as well as the recommendation of the VR experience and the destination itself. To achieve our goal, we offered 405 participants an experimental VR experience with digital content about a wine tourism activity. The results showed that participants feel that the VR experience influences their behavioural intention towards the wine tourism destination. The satisfaction felt from the experience leads to a significant effect on the intention to visit and to recommend the destination and the VR activity. These findings suggest to wine tourism destination managers that VR can play an essential role in tourism management.