A Virtual Tour for the Promotion of Tourism of the City of Bari

Abstract

The use of information technology in the field of cultural heritage makes it possible to involve more and more people in the promotion of cultural heritage, fostering social, cultural, economic and community growth. This work stems from the interest in using Virtual Reality (VR) in the field of cultural heritage, creating a tour of the city of Bari that tells its evolution over the years. To this end, a low-cost VR360 application has been developed which, by means of a cardboard, allows the user to experience a virtual journey through time. It tells the story of the city, focusing on its urban expansion and the evolution of its architectural styles, influenced by various dominations over the centuries, up to the current state. The virtual environment was created from spherical images of the city, captured through 360° cameras and enriched with various types of information content. The user experience was assessed by means of a questionnaire derived from previous work that was generalised and adapted to the considered scenario: the results showed a very good level of satisfaction, usability, engagement, immersion and sense of presence; the highest score was obtained for the visual quality of the images of the virtual environment.

Virtual Tour as a Virtual Experience of Destination Management Organisations in Slovakia

“…In the virtual tours of the DMO, special emphasis was placed on presenting the diversity of cultural tourism, exploring the possibilities of innovative attraction development from the perspective of various cultural institutions, museums, castles and other historic buildings, as well as music and festival tourism. As we have seen so far, the sector's value creation processes are also shaped by increasingly powerful information technology solutions (De Luca et al, 2022), so the role of various smart (for example: augmented reality, virtual reality) and artificial intelligence -based achievements could be used more widely not only for marketing purposes, but also for destination development.…”

Developing a “Smart Village” through the Implementation of Mobile Applications

“…In rural areas, it has been very important to create mobile tourism applications, through which self-guided rural tourists could visit and discover rural areas with tourist potential but no organized tourist routes (Kazmina et al, 2021). In addition, virtual tourism could fulfil cultural, educational and recreational functions of rural tourism destinations (Cherevichko, 2004). De Luca et al, (2022 pointed out that virtual tours have become progressively attractive for rural tourists, who are exposed to innovative and personalized experiences.…”

Institutional resilience of tourism villages against the Covid-19 pandemic in the Special Region of Yogyakarta

“…While virtual tours can be highly beneficial for tourists who have limitations in terms of resources, economic capacity, free time, and access [26], the reality is that it requires great effort for tourist villages to find new visitors. Thus, further studies and strategies are still needed to develop virtual tours as effective attractions for tourist villages as is done by the city of Bari [27].…”

“…In addition, the integration of technology and smart solutions into community management practices is IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1263/1/012004 3 important to increase institutional efficiency and overcome the limitations caused by large-scale lockdowns [21][22][23]. Numerous technological implementations emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as cashless payments and virtual tours [24][25][26][27]. This smart governance technique is at the same time able to attract public participation in the pandemic era [25].…”