Wearing a virtual reality helmet, you can immediately dive into the Great Barrier Reef and see the clear and calm ocean current in the Pacific Ocean and colorful fish passing by;With a click of the mouse, you can walk on the garden path of Versailles in spring, or enjoy a live concert at the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall... At present, immersive tourism without leaving home is becoming a daily choice for many people.
After the outbreak of COVID-19, offline experience activities such as tourism, performance watching and exhibition watching almost stopped, and the global tourism industry suffered a heavy blow.Under the change, the new trend of tourism is gradually emerging: science and technology are intervening with an unprecedented momentum, and digital tourism integrated with VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), MR (mixed reality) and other technologies has not only "cured" tourism lovers trapped at home, but also opened a window for the tourism industry.
Admittedly, tourism under the "blessing" of digital technology has shortcomings: this is the travel without the main body and the scenery cut.We can see the world with others' eyes, but what we miss is the touch of the warm and cool sea water over the instep, the smile of a stranger in front of the same artwork, and the moment of satisfaction when eating delicious food... No matter how fast the technology develops, travel always has its irreplaceable significance: a brief farewell to daily life, seeing mountains and waters in strange scenes, seeing others and seeing yourself.But when we look far away, another kind of tourism is slowly unfolding.
With the help of digital technology, tourists can reach places that ordinary people cannot reach: swim with humpback whales in Antarctica, look at the magnificent scenery from the crater of the volcano, look at the Angel Falls in the sky one second, and turn into flying water next second - 4K display and Dolby panoramic sound technology bring immersive audio-visual experience,The extraordinary scenery of those remote places has never been so accessible.
Digital tourism has great potential in promoting "accessibility".In recent years, some enterprises providing virtual tourism services released surveys that showed that online tourism was widely welcomed by the elderly, and "silver haired people" even became a new growth point of the company's business.Digital tourism can make up for the lack of personal presence, whether it is due to high travel costs or inconvenient travel due to old age and disability.
Digital tourism is also ecologically friendly.Digital tourism provides a win-win solution for tourist attractions that are ecologically fragile due to excessive tourism or cultural heritage that needs protection.The "Digital Dunhuang" project conducts comprehensive digital collection, processing and storage of Dunhuang Grottoes and related cultural relics, allowing cultural and museum lovers to visit the caves at any time and browse giant murals in high-definition resolution.Museums, theatres, concert halls, zoological and botanical gardens around the world have developed digital projects to turn the world into a "school without walls".
In the post epidemic era, digital tourism will no longer be a "quick fix", but an important factor in reshaping the tourism industry. Online and offline tourism will complement each other, thus enriching the connotation of tourism.(Zhuang Xueya)
