Entrepreneurship and innovation in tourism: Examining immersive technologies, virtual reality, and augmented reality

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been analysed from different approaches to understand the process of creating a company and its growth. Increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has encouraged new entrepreneurs to adapt their modus operandi to the new technological environment and search for new opportunities in this context, using the opportunities provided by the new technological resources to achieve company success. Accordingly, the notions of entrepreneur and entrepreneurial organizations have evolved. The present chapter describes the evolution of these concepts and the potential of this field of study in the tourism sector. A case study methodology was adopted to understand the elements involved in the entrepreneurship cycle. One case study is elaborated on, depicting the firm Sebka Technology, which applies disruptive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to the tourism sector. From the interview data, we developed a model that explains the entrepreneurship cycle, namely the main motivations to decide to create an organization and identifies the factors that favour the creation of the company and the drivers for the company growth. The information obtained from this study sheds light on future research avenues in entrepreneurship and innovation in the tourism sector.