Anticipating the Future of the Egyptian Tourism and Hotel Sector in Light of Virtual Reality Applications as One of the Supporting Competitiveness Mechanisms

The world is witnessing tremendous developments in the field of information and communications technology, and among the future technologies that are attracting attention are virtual reality technologies and its applications that have revolutionized all fields. One of the most important areas affected by virtual reality technologies and in which it can be applied on a large scale is the tourism and hotel sector. Therefore, this research aims to highlight the role of virtual reality applications in developing the tourism and hotel product and its impact on the development of the Egyptian tourism and hotel sector by creating a proposed framework for the influential relationship between the use of virtual reality applications and increasing the competitiveness of the tourism and hotel sector, and shedding light on the extent to which tourism and hotel activity benefit. One of the applications of virtual reality, where hotels and tourist attractions are marketed in an interactive and more effective way by developing a virtual coexistence experience of what will be experienced if traveling to a country and staying in specific hotels to convince a larger number of potential customers and encourage them to make a decision faster. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, and to achieve the objectives of the study, the study population consists of all stakeholders and planners of tourism and hotel activity in government tourism agencies, and marketing managers in five-star hotels and Category a tourism companies in the Greater Cairo Governorate. Accordingly, a simple random sample of (150) individuals was selected from the study population, and the number of responses suitable for analysis was 113, including 89 for tourism companies, category A, and 24 for five-star hotels. A questionnaire was used to collect data from sample members. The study showed that the majority of opinions believe that virtual reality applications allow travelers to reduce risks because they will get to experience the product or service in the most clear way before making a travel decision, in addition to the importance of working to remove the difficulties facing the application of virtual reality in the Egyptian tourism and hotel sector.