Virtual Technologies for Tourism Promotion in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Virtual Technologies can provide information visualisation and manipulation, and coupling such technology with virtual mapping can provide a promotional tool for geographic locations. Interest levels of particular historical and tourist sites are low as they lack the necessary promotion to become viable destinations, thus lowering employment and revenue potential. A high number of promotional tools exist and have been employed to create awareness of tourists, however, most have not quite grasped the imagination or attention of potential tourists. This paper aims to discuss the benefits of Virtual Reality to tourism promotion and go on to analyse and formulate a model framework for how to employ virtual technologies for geographic information through Webbased services that network millions of people together can promote tourism in Zimbabwe.