A Bibliometric Analysis of the Last 25 Years of Virtual Reality Studies in Tourism

Virtual reality applications that have been diversified day by day are important in tourism as well as in engineering, medicine, education and marketing. Making all kinds of marketing and reservations in a virtual environment in tourism is one of the most important advantages of tourism today. Due to the nature of virtual reality applications, it is valuable to promote tourism because tourism is based on discovering new places and getting new experiences. The aim of this study is to present the profile of articles about tourism and virtual reality in Turkey. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis was carried out over 73 articles which were published in Turkish Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBIM) between 1996-2009. Among the articles published on virtual reality, 1 article was found to be in Tourism discipline. Accordingly, it was concluded that the publications in the field were insufficient. Therefore, considering that the importance of virtual reality applications will increase for the tourism industry in the coming years, it could be recommended that tourism researchers in universities focus more on this issue. The tourism industry will need marketing devices that will both help feel remote and as if they were in the destination.