This study presents a 30-year scientometric review (1990–2023) examining how digital technologies, including virtual reality/augmented reality, artificial intelligence, smart tourism, and the metaverse, have progressively converged with experience-centered research in tourism marketing. Using Web of Science data and CiteSpace visualizations, the analysis indicates no abrupt conceptual shift, but rather a gradual realignment between technological and experiential constructs. Keyword co-occurrence, co-citation structures, and temporal bursts indicate increasing integration of immersion, personalization, engagement, memory, and virtual identity within technology-oriented research. These patterns culminate in a techno-experiential perspective, conceptualized as the Techno-Experiential Perspective in Tourism Marketing framework, which views technology as an experiential infrastructure shaping anticipatory, in situ, and post-experience processes.
Wang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.