Investigating the Usage of Virtual Reality Technology as a Marketing Tool in Five Star Hotels

Abstract

One of the most promising technologies for experiential marketing is Virtual Reality "VR". VR usage at home is surging amid the pandemic, putting technology on the path to spread widely. By giving customers the chance to try before they buy, VR may play an increasingly important and prevalent role which stimulates the desire to travel and helps customers to make their decisions about where to visit. For example, in the hotel industry, most guests tend to make their purchase decisions based on the visuals and reviews available on hotels’ websites which have been one of the essential tools that assist prospective guests in their decision making. The significance of this study emerges from the hotels' need to overcome the intangibility of hotel services, and realistically representing hotel service which may be used as a marketing tool to convey the quality of the hotel’s offerings before the purchase. The aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of VR as a marketing tool in a sample of five-star hotels. A questionnaire will be designed to fulfill the research objective. The questionnaire will be distributed to a sample of customers in Cairo five-star hotels. The expected results and findings of the study will show that VR technology as a marketing tool has significant impacts on customers' decision-making process to visit specific hotels which are very effective in forming the hotels' image, reputation and competitive advantages.