Is VR always better for destination marketing? Comparing different media and styles

The increasing popularity and accessibility of virtual reality (VR) presents an opportunity for destination marketers to leverage its strengths to attract visitors. However, VR's benefits over more traditional media formats remain unclear. This paper reports results from two experiments that compared the impacts of consuming destination marketing material through VR with other media formats. The measured impacts include destination image, perceived advertising effectiveness, and behavioral intentions. Further, the dual experiments allowed for a comparison between different VR content styles (i.e. active vs. passive). Results show that more active VR content largely outperformed other media formats, but with a more passive style of VR these benefits were mostly muted. The findings have direct theoretical and practical implications relating to VR tourism marketing.