A Systematic Literature Review of Virtual Reality Utilization in Tourism During COVID-19 Pandemic

Virtual reality (VR) is an innovation that is increasingly applied in many fields of study. Although VR is adapted in most of simulation works like aviation, cargo movement, surgery, and phobia therapy, the application in tourism has different intention compared to other contexts, which is for promotion purpose. Therefore, this study provides a systematic literature review of how VR has been applied to help promoting tourism industry during the pandemic of COVID-19, when most people in the world are restricted from traveling, and ordered to stay at home. A research question that would address application of VR in tourism is identified. A comprehensive literature search has been carried out resulting 87 journals and proceeding papers are filtered. Data extraction and synthesize is performed on the selected studies based on the research question. From the SLR process, we have found that VR is utilised in tourism for promotion purposes, and to evaluate the attitude and emotion of users towards the application of VR in virtual tourism during the pandemic. Our result suggests that tourism industry players need to pay more attention and widen the intention in utilizing VR in the future to confirm the sustainability of tourism industry.