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An increasing number of immersive technologies have been adopted in museum tourism in response to shifting consumer habits in the digital era. In contrast, the authenticity experience of museum tourists relies on genuine relics, the environment and activities, which are ancient or traditional. This raises the question of whether tourists can perceive authenticity in immersive technology-based museum tourism. To address this question, this study aims to explore the impact of virtual reality (VR) attributes on tourists’ presence, tourism authenticity and subsequent behavioral intentions in virtual museums.

Data were collected via scenario-based surveys of participants who had taken virtual museum tours based on VR. A total of 174 effective questionnaires were collected for exploratory factor analysis via SPSS 25. Afterward, 597 questionnaires were obtained for confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis via Mplus 7.4.

A conceptual model of how VR attributes influence presence, authenticity and visit intention was developed. There is a chain intermediary between presence and visit intentions, from original authenticity to interactive authenticity and then to emotional authenticity. Technology readiness and museum familiarity moderate some relationships between VR attributes and presence.

The findings can guide museums in improving the use of VR. For example, managers can improve the quality of virtual systems and adopt various interactive forms to enhance tourists’ participation experiences.

These research findings contribute to the research area of immersive technology adoption, enhance the understanding of tourism authenticity in the new context of technology application and extend the presence-emotion-intention theory.

The Tourist Gaze has been debated, reimagined and applied to a variety of actors and settings. This paper helps investigate how contemporary architecture operates as subject and participant in gazing practices.

Using Yelp reviews of art museums in a regional US city, a thematic analysis of text reviews and image uploads was conducted.

Reviewers do refer to buildings as objects of the gaze; but they also connect their experience of the building to emotions and to actions and use the building to orient themselves spatially. This article demonstrates that contemporary buildings are important components of tourist experiences as objects of the gaze, but also as frames for gazing and as stages for tourist practices.

The research implications are both topical and methodological: the paper demonstrates that contemporary (neo-modern) architecture is a vibrant avenue of research, and that social networking sites are a promising potential source of data for studying architecture in the social field.

This research uses an underexplored data set, Yelp reviews, to capture what people pay attention to and think others will find interesting about architecture. It also adds important layers to studies on the tourist gaze. First, it emphasizes that architecture is important to tourists not only as an object of the gaze but also as a site for affective experience, action and daily life. Second, it addresses some building styles beyond the historical ones that are foundational to the idea of the tourist gaze.

This paper aims to examine how museums reach Generation Z virtual tourists using TikTok videos to elucidate the relationship between the video elements and types of engagement by classifying the characteristics of popular themes in the museums’ short videos.

The format, type and content of TikTok videos published by the seven international museums with the most popular TikTok accounts were analyzed. Thematic analysis included 313 short TikTok videos randomly chosen from those published by the museums between 2020 and 2022. Using descriptive analysis, museum-related TikTok usage and user engagement are presented; regression analysis revealed the most significant themes for audience engagement.

Museum promotions commonly use several strategies, including incorporating text-based information, captions, hashtags and background music into the video formats. Oral speech/documentary-style videos and combined video genres are less common. The most frequently presented video topics included history, infotainment, informative content and promotional elements. The results identify specific formats (titles and subtitles), types (demonstrations, news/events and TikTok dances/movements) and promotional themes that result in audiences’ virtual engagement in the form of “likes” and “comments” and increase the museums’ TikTok channel followers.

The results demonstrate that short videos on social media platforms encompass various strategies involving different formats, types and themes. Museums can use these strategies to engage virtual tourists. This study also provides valuable suggestions for museums and galleries seeking to leverage short videos as effective marketing mechanisms.

Smart Heritage is a recently established discourse that entwines smartness and the heritage discipline. Studies have shown that place identity is at the core of value-based frameworks of built heritage. This study aims to unveil the role of identity in existing Smart Heritage frameworks, which is currently a gap in existing research.

To better understand place identity in the Smart Heritage context and facilitate future framework establishments, this study uses a cross-case analysis method to scrutinise common trends in the identity development of seven current best practices.

The results show that current best practices involve smart technologies in sustaining or rebuilding heritage identities, mostly mapped on the local scale. Catered solutions are essential in this context due to historic cities’ variegated pursuits of identity. Most current Smart Heritage projects are at the transitioning stage from digital to smart, as the autonomous ability of smart innovations is yet to be fully realised on the city or the global scale. Researchers are encouraged to draw essence from existing heritage frameworks considering the built heritage’s place identity, which is at the core of culturally sustainable Smart Heritage transitions.

This study concludes with five recommendations for addressing heritage identity in Smart Heritage frameworks, targeting future research avenues. Also, this study furthers the discussion on the linkage of Smart Heritage, place identity and marketing strategy, contributing to the city branding and tourism management field. Future research should extend the case-study selection beyond Europe, which is a recognised limitation of this study.

China has been going through a “museum boom” paralleling the domestic tourism boom since 2000; such growth changed the cultural landscape; museums became a vital characteristic of some Chinese cities for both residents and tourists. Encouraged by this growth, the more ambitious “All-for-one Museum (全域博物馆)” was proposed. The physical boundary between museums and living spaces is infinite ambiguity, challenging the idea of museums as “heterotopias.” This study aims to explore the musealization of urban spaces in the context of anthropology and museology, scrutinizing the cultural-political intentions and meanings of these developments, and seeks to ignite further investigation into the reconstruction of historical imaginaries for tourists and urban populations across related disciplines.

This paper examines two cases in Chinese metropolises, Beijing and Shanghai, to illustrate this development of musealization, that is, how the cities actively leverage museological values and methods to connect with their past. In the Beijing case, the authors explore how the local government is leading the effort to musealize the city; in the Shanghai case, they will see how tourists, especially dweller-tourists, navigate through a curated past story in the city and connect their own experience, memory and identity with the place.

The all-for-one museum creates a museal layer projected onto the bigger urban space, even though the authenticity of the “past” is challenged by the modernization development of the city. The authors also find out that for some tourists (especially dweller-tourists), an existential sense of authenticity plays a more significant role as they not only seek to sightsee the past of the city but also to take part in its creation.

This paper discusses two kinds of musealization in cosmopolitan cities of Beijing and Shanghai: top-down and bottom-up. It approaches questions about the musealization of urban spaces from the perspectives of anthropology and museology, and discusses musealization in the specific historical context of China’s modernization process.

Tourist guides, one of the important service providers of tourism, have effected greatly by smart tourism technology during the COVID-19 period. It is thought that this trend will continue to increase in the future. Also, there are some challenges of smart tourism post pandemic on tour guides. In this context, the study aims to examine the levels of utilization of smart tourism applications by tourist guides, their activities in the COVID-19 period, and the transformation that tour guiding will undergo in the future. Within the scope of the study, existing smart tourism applications used in tours were examined with opportunities and challenges sides. In addition, the reflection of the guided cultural tours in the future was evaluated.

This paper aims to contribute to urban tourism segmentation studies by examining the role of culture as a motivation for city visits, different preferences for activities and the demographic factors that influence activity choices. This study also compares the memorability of the trip across the segments identified based on their undertaken activities.

This paper draws on questionnaire data that was collected from 614 tourists in Budapest, Hungary. Tourist segmentation was based on a two-step procedure: principal component analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. Multinomial logistic regression was applied to reveal the effect of different demographic and travel-related characteristics on the segments.

The research revealed that cultural activities are still the most important motivation for urban tourists and that cultural tourists constitute the biggest segment (43%). They show a preference for heritage sites, museums and galleries rather than performing arts and festivals. Multinomial logistic regression showed that party tourists can be differentiated from cultural tourists and city break tourists predominantly by age and travel status. Older age groups and women are more likely to be interested in heritage sites, museums and galleries. Party tourists found their experience significantly more memorable than any other group and were much more likely to re-visit and recommend.

Overall, this study provides useful information for destination management organisations and city agencies about which activities to promote and how to segment and potentially target tourists. This study did not include lifestyle and personality factors, secondary and complementary attractions or cultural proximity and distance.

There have been relatively few recent studies on urban cultural tourism segmentation, especially in whole destinations rather than at individual attractions, it was therefore considered timely to re-visit this area of research. This paper reinforces the importance of segmentation studies in tourism and analyses the changing motivations and activity preferences of urban cultural tourists over time.

This research paper aims to investigate the predictors and outcomes of immersive technology adoption in tourism.

PLS-SEM is used for data collected from tourists visiting the UAE and Egypt to examine predictors and consequences of adoption.

It is revealed that perceived ease of use, enjoyment, immersion, usefulness and attitude towards technology predict immersive technology adoption. It is also revealed that the adoption affects tourists’ perceived value and engagement, which, in turn, affects tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The study has integrated a research model that combines both antecedents and consequences of immersive technology adoption where few empirical investigations were revealed to draw conclusions on this research area. Also, missing relations have been included and tested in the research model.

This study aims to explore how closed factories could be transformed and provide a path for sustainable development for a territory. The authors focus on the case of the Great Mine Serbariu, located in Carbonia (Sardinia), which used to be the largest coal mine in Italy between 1939 and 1964.

The authors adopt a qualitative research design based on an exploratory single-case study, drawing on interviews with the main stakeholders, on a survey conducted among 5,158 visitors, and on administrative documentation of the City Council.

The analysis of the Great Mine Serbariu case showed that the regeneration of an exhausted mine serves a model of sustainable development, especially for the redevelopment of other urban and industrial degraded areas. The Great mine Serbariu was restored and turned into a place of culture, tourism, research and higher education, with the Italian Cultural Centre of Coal Mining (ICCCM) establishing its headquarters in the heart of the former mine. It attracted almost 220,000 visitors, generating both domestic and international tourist flows and making an industrial heritage a real resource for the area.

This article advances the authors’ understanding of how closed industries could become an instrument for sustainable development on the social, economic, touristic and cultural levels. This study would help local governments with examples to enhance the historical resources to create a new identity that led to a sustainable development of an urban landscape, and to create networks with other comparable museums all over Europe to better exploit the touristic and cultural potential.

This study aims to determine museum experiences by analyzing the TripAdvisor reviews of the museum visitors in Gaziantep and offer suggestions for improving the visitors' experiences by taking museum curators' opinions.

The case study method was used as one of the qualitative approaches in the study. The research comprises two stages. TripAdvisor reviews about five museums in Gaziantep were analyzed in the first stage, and museum curators' opinions on the visitor complaint reasons and solution suggestions were discussed in the second stage.

The study showed that satisfying or non-satisfying experience factors might differ according to visitors, museum curators and both visitors and museum curators. Therefore, each museum curator should effectively manage every component of visitor experience factors by its target audience.

Although this study has some valuable findings and contributes to the literature, it also has limitations. The study's sample consists of five museums in Gaziantep. Further studies can be carried out on a larger population and sample. The data for determining visitor experiences, the first stage of the research, were obtained only from an online platform (TripAdvisor).

The proposed model provides a holistic perspective on evaluating and managing visitor experience. There may be structural problems (small size of the museum area, lack of parking spaces and elevators, etc.) with the museum beyond the manager's control. Also, the lack of information and communication (limited concept, lack of artifacts, etc.) causes criticisms of the museum.

This paper contributes to the museum management literature with a model for enriching the quality of the museum experience and increasing the museum's attractiveness. The study showed that museums contribute to the visitor's experience in all dimensions. While visitors thought museums primarily contribute to object experience, museum curators thought museums contribute more to visitors' cognitive experience and other experience elements.

The present study analyzed the visitor comments and the opinions of museum curators from a holistic perspective, considering the internal and external factors that are effective in the visitor experience, and revealed the reasons for the visitors' negative experience and the solution suggestions toward the improvement of the visitor experience.