Sustainable tourist space: From reality to virtual reality?

Abstract As national and international tourism continues to develop, new forms of tourism — especially ecotourism — are emerging. Through its development, tourism has progressively lost its sense of authenticity in an effort to gain volume, a phenomenon that, in return, has triggered the emergence of new, sustainable forms of tourism. These recent developments only reflect a more insistent and contemporary expression of a concern as old as tourism itself. Although applied unevenly, a basic principle of tourism has been not to compromise development for an ill‐considered exploitation of the resources on which tourism is dependent. However, it has to be noted that frequently ecotourism tends to become a kind of mass ecotourism, which leads to a dead end and encourages some authors to further challenge the value of tourism itself. This radical attitude is unacceptable for economic and social reasons. At the same time, virtual reality is becoming more important in the world of tourism (or perhaps ‘cybertourism'), both as a tool for tourism promotion and as a tourist destination itself (e.g., computer‐generated amusements in leisure parks and virtual theme parks). Virtual reality seems to promote tourism, rather than discourage it. It also contributes to making the relations between individuals and tourist space more complex. One can expect that virtual tourism will improve over time and will satisfy some of the tourists’ demands for travel experiences. It could be asked, therefore, whether a combination of virtual reality and reality could give mass tourism greater sustainability. But this can also lead to a dual tourism, leaving the ‘rich’ with reality — ever more costly in terms of time and money, but also more gratifying — and the ‘poor’ with an easily accessible and reproducible virtual reality, but which does not provide a full sense of place. It is likely that the tourist experience will increasingly become a mixture of reality and virtual reality, thereby more appropriately satisfying the demands of sustainability.