Metaverse Tourism Will Change How You Travel Forever

The Volcano You Can Touch Without Burning

I stood on the rim of Kilauea in 2020, but not in Hawaii. I was in my apartment in Brooklyn, wearing a VR headset that cost less than a plane ticket. The floor beneath me glowed orange. Heat shimmered across the lava lake. I could hear the crackle of molten rock, the low rumble of the earth breathing. I did not feel the heat. I did not smell the sulfur. But for forty five minutes, I forgot I was indoors.

That experience was a demo, a beta, a proof of concept. It was also a glimpse of something Dimitrios Buhalis, Daniel Leung, and Michael S. Lin at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have been studying seriously. In a 2023 paper published in Tourism Management, the authors argue that the metaverse is not a gimmick for gaming. It is the next disruptive technology that will transform how we travel, how we choose destinations, and even what it means to visit a place (Buhalis et al., 2023).

The paper has already accumulated over 800 citations. That is not because the authors invented something. It is because they named something that was already happening and showed why it matters.

What the Metaverse Actually Does to Travel

Let me be precise. The metaverse, as Buhalis and his coauthors define it, is not a single virtual world. It is a convergence of physical and digital universes that allows users to seamlessly traverse between them (Buhalis et al., 2023). You do not log out of reality. You layer digital experiences onto it, or step into entirely simulated environments that feel real enough to fool your brain.

The authors conducted a systematic review of scholarly works, media articles, and industry reports. They did not run a lab experiment with 200 subjects. They synthesized what we already know from multiple fields: computer science, psychology, marketing, and tourism management. Then they built a framework for how this technology will reshape an entire industry.

The key finding is counterintuitive. Virtual tourism does not kill real travel. It feeds it.

Buhalis and his colleagues found that visiting destinations virtually actually motivates people to travel in person (Buhalis et al., 2023). This is not obvious. When you can experience Machu Picchu from your couch, why would you bother with the altitude sickness, the expensive flights, the crowds? Because the virtual experience is not a replacement. It is a preview. It builds desire. It makes the real thing feel urgent.

The Digital Twin Effect

One of the paper's most concrete contributions is the concept of digital twins for destinations. A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical place, updated in real time with data from sensors, cameras, and user interactions. Imagine opening an app and seeing a perfect 3D model of the Colosseum, with live crowd density, weather conditions, and ticket availability. Imagine walking through it before you book your flight.

Buhalis and his coauthors argue that digital twins will empower destination awareness, positioning, and branding (Buhalis et al., 2023). They will also transform coordination and management. A city can test a new pedestrian zone in the metaverse before spending millions on street construction. A hotel can run virtual tours that show exactly which rooms have the best views, updated with current occupancy.

This is not science fiction. Singapore already has a digital twin of the entire city, used for urban planning. The tourism industry is just beginning to catch up.

The Time Travel Paradox

Here is the part that made me stop and reread the abstract. The authors write that digital immersion offers opportunities for people to travel in time (Buhalis et al., 2023). Not just across space, but across centuries.

You can experience ancient encounters. Walk through the Roman Forum as it looked in 200 AD. Watch the eruption of Vesuvius from a safe distance. Stand on the deck of a Viking ship during a storm. These experiences are not passive videos. They are interactive environments where you can move, touch objects, and talk to AI powered historical figures.

The authors are careful to note that this is still experimental. But they are not vague. They specify the types of experiences that become possible: space explorations, dangerous natural phenomena like volcano eruptions, and historical reconstructions (Buhalis et al., 2023). These are not things you can do in real life. Not safely. Not at all.

This changes the entire logic of tourism. Right now, travel is about going somewhere. In the metaverse, travel becomes about experiencing something. The destination is not a place. It is a moment.

What the Research Actually Measured

Let me be honest about the methodology. This paper is a review, not a controlled experiment. The authors did not strap 500 tourists into VR headsets and measure their travel intentions. They analyzed existing studies, industry reports, and media coverage. They looked at what has been tested in gaming ecosystems, where millions of people already interact in virtual worlds. They drew connections between those findings and the tourism industry.

This is a legitimate approach for a field that is still emerging. You cannot run a randomized trial on a technology that does not fully exist yet. But it means the conclusions are directional, not definitive.

The authors identify the building blocks of metaverse tourism: immersive hardware, real time data integration, social interaction systems, and economic models for virtual transactions. They also outline research directions. They want to know how virtual experiences affect real world behavior. They want to know if people who visit a digital twin of Paris are more likely to book a flight, or if they feel satisfied and stay home.

The evidence so far, from gaming and early tourism experiments, suggests the former. But the authors are honest that more research is needed.

The Consumer Behavior Shift You Did Not See Coming

Here is where the paper gets genuinely surprising. Buhalis and his colleagues argue that the metaverse will transform consumer behavior, not just add a new channel for booking flights (Buhalis et al., 2023).

Think about how you plan a vacation now. You look at photos. You read reviews. You watch videos. All of these are secondhand representations. You are deciding based on what someone else saw and chose to show you.

In the metaverse, you experience the destination firsthand. You walk the streets. You check the lighting at sunset. You see if the hotel lobby is actually as grand as the photos suggest. You interact with locals, or AI versions of them. You make decisions based on your own sensory experience, not curated marketing.

This is a radical shift in power. Right now, destinations control their image. They choose which photos to publish, which angles to show. In the metaverse, the user controls the experience. They can walk into the back alley behind the tourist market. They can see the graffiti and the trash cans and the real life that marketing departments prefer to crop out.

The authors call this empowerment. It is also a threat. Destinations that cannot survive an honest virtual tour will suffer. Destinations that are better in person than in photos will thrive.

The Social Layer

The metaverse is not a solitary experience. The authors emphasize that users can explore immersive environments for working, learning, transacting, and socializing with others (Buhalis et al., 2023). This is already evident in gaming ecosystems like Roblox and Fortnite, where millions of people gather for concerts, fashion shows, and brand experiences.

Tourism in the metaverse will be social. You will visit the Eiffel Tower with friends who live on different continents. You will share the experience in real time, see their avatars react, hear their voices. This is different from watching a travel video alone. It is closer to actually being there together.

The authors do not say this explicitly, but the implication is clear. The metaverse collapses distance. It does not just bring the destination to you. It brings your travel companions with you.

What This Does Not Prove

I want to be clear about the limits of this research. The paper is a vision paper. It describes what is possible, not what is guaranteed. The authors are aware of this. They identify challenges for the future: technical limitations, privacy concerns, economic inequality, and the risk of cultural commodification.

The metaverse requires expensive hardware. Good VR headsets cost hundreds of dollars. High speed internet is not universal. If virtual tourism becomes a substitute for real travel, it could deepen the gap between people who can afford to go anywhere and people who can afford only the simulation.

There is also the question of authenticity. Is a virtual experience of a place meaningful? Or is it a hollow copy, like a photograph of a meal? The authors believe virtual experiences will motivate real travel, but they do not have long term data to prove it. The paper was published in 2023. The metaverse is still being built.

The research also does not address the psychological effects of prolonged immersion. What happens to your memory of a place when you have experienced it both virtually and physically? Do the two blend together? Does the virtual version overwrite the real one? These are open questions.

What This Actually Means

• ▸Destinations need to build digital twins now. The cities and countries that invest in accurate, immersive virtual replicas will capture the attention of travelers before they book anything. The ones that wait will be invisible. Buhalis and his coauthors make clear that digital twins are not optional. They are the new storefront.

• ▸The travel industry will shift from selling destinations to selling experiences. A ticket to a place is a commodity. A ticket to a moment in time, a historical event, a natural phenomenon, that is unique. The authors show that the metaverse enables experiences that have no physical equivalent. The industry should start pricing those experiences now.

• ▸Virtual tourism will not replace real travel. It will make it more selective. People will use the metaverse to filter out destinations that do not meet their expectations. They will arrive with higher standards and more specific desires. The travel industry must adapt to a customer who has already walked the streets.

• ▸Marketing will become honest or irrelevant. When users can explore a destination firsthand, glossy brochures lose their power. The authors argue that the metaverse empowers consumer awareness. What they do not say is that it punishes deception. A resort that photoshops its beach will be exposed the moment someone puts on a headset.

• ▸The most valuable tourism asset is not a landmark. It is a story. The paper emphasizes time travel and historical reconstruction. The destinations that invest in narrative, in recreating the past, in letting people live inside history, will dominate the metaverse. A pile of stones is not enough. You need the story of who lived there and what they did.

I have not been back to Kilauea since that Brooklyn afternoon. I have not needed to. The memory of standing on that rim, of feeling the planet alive beneath my feet, is still vivid. But I also know that memory is incomplete. I did not feel the heat. I did not smell the sulfur. I did not stand there for hours watching the light change.

That is the tension at the heart of this research. The metaverse gives us something real, but not everything. It is a preview, a promise, a hand reaching across the gap between imagination and experience. Buhalis, Leung, and Lin have mapped the terrain. The rest of us get to walk it.