Jayaraman 1

Krishnamurthy Jayaraman

Debra Jizi

UWRT 1104

10 November 2017

Double Entry Journal

Lee, O, and JE Oh. The Impact of Virtual Reality Functions of a Hotel Website on Travel

Anxiety. Cyberpsychology & Behavior : the Impact of the Internet, Multimedia and

Virtual Reality on Behavior and Society, vol. 10, no. 4, 2007, pp. 5846.

Source: Quote (Page# or Paragraph #) Responses

PEOPLE WHO PLAN to travel to an It isnt wrong. Everyone has anxiety about
unknown location tend to have at least some something when travelling to a foreign country,
degree of anxiety about the travel(Lee and it doesnt have to be huge but everyone has
Oh, 1) something to be afraid of.

The Internet offers good tools to alleviate
this kind of anxiety by providing specific
information so that travelers get to know the
unknown place they plan to visit. The
Internet provides rich information about the
city, climate, crime rate, and other factors
that are generally useful for relieving the
fear of the unknown.(Lee and Oh, 1)
The internet is definitely something that has
advanced far beyond what people thought it
was going to be. You are able to research
different things, in this case you can research
hotels with different reviews in order to get more
information about the location in order to relieve
the anxiety. You can find out more about the
other factors like the weather and crime rate as
well which can be great when finding certain
areas you should steer away from when visiting
a different country.

However, for people who have a high
degree of anxiety, or generalized anxiety
disorder, textual information may be
unsatisfactory; that is, they want to be more
assured of safety and, above all, more
familiar with the location.(Lee and Oh, 1)
But of course there are people who have an
even greater degree of anxiety who dont
believe the word of hundreds of supporters of a
location or the idea of a rating system and will
only believe that idea when they see the
location and be assured of the safety
themselves.

Web technology has enabled many hotels This is definitely an amazing innovation from the
to offer virtual reality (VR) tours that provide future, making a Virtual Reality tour for the hotel

a complete picture of the hotel. VR tours
give anxious travelers some relief by
familiarizing them with the unknownthe
unknown becomes the known. This study
embarks on the empirical investigation of
the relationship between VR function of a
hotel website and its impact on anxious
travelers.(Lee and Oh, 2)
Information Systems Lab of Hanyang
University in South Korea constructed a
hotel website that implemented a VR tour
function of the hotel facilities. The VR parts
of the hotel included its exterior, the lobby, a
guest room, and a restaurant. A hotel in Jeju
island of South Korea was chosen for
shooting because of its exotic climate, which
was completely different from the climate on
the mainland. Climatic difference was a
necessary condition in order for participants
in this experiment to feel that they were
traveling to an unfamiliar place.(Lee and
Oh, 2)
Users of this website can move a mouse to
see 360-degree-angle views of the various
parts of the hotel, including its entire
exterior, which is an important aspect for
any anxious traveler who might suffer from
agoraphobia(Lee and Oh, 2)
Participants were given 30 min for viewing
the exterior VR tour, 10 min for the lobby VR
tour, 10 minutes for the guest room VR tour,
and 10 minutes for the restaurant VR tour.
The reason we allotted more time for the VR
tour of the hotels exterior is that we
believed a lot of anxiety might be caused by
the lack of familiarity with the physical
landscape of the building and the
surrounding area.(Lee and Oh, 2)
the more anxious people are toward a
certain travel, the more psychological relief
they can receive by using the VR functions
of a hotel website(Lee and Oh 3)
Jayaraman 2
location. This completely destroys an excuse to
not go on a vacation due to unfamiliarity with a
hotel just based on reviews. Using VR, more
high anxiety people can actually travel and have
fun without being scared of somewhere they
havent been by essentially travelling it to it
online first.
Of course South Korea is the country to get this
idea first, they are one of the front runners in
futuristic innovations such as this one. The fact
that they made a tour of the lobby, guest rooms,
restaurant and the exterior really show their
perseverance to get high anxiety people to
travel to the country and to their hotel
specifically.
Virtual Reality serves as a boundary between
the real world and computers. Giving a 360
viewing angle allows the user to turn a full 360
degrees in order to see every aspect of the
room. The exterior is also viewable to help
people who want to see the outside of the
building more, maybe to be able to define it
better with other buildings similar.
It goes to show how the South Koreans
program and design their groundbreaking ideas.
Making it like an actual tour, compared to just
scrolling around google earth and looking at
buildings, the tours are allotted in a time period
which makes it seems even more realistic.
There is even more time allotted for the exterior
view so people can remember the look as well
as examine other buildings nearby that may
have some relevance to their travel plan.
The people believe that if people are generally
have more anxiety than the average person
about travelling, the VR website was proven to
be more affective in giving those travelers relief.