Experiencing Digital Travel vs. Substituting Physical Travel with Digital Travel-on Intention to Use Digital Travel Applications in the Future

Vacations are essential for many people, offering a break from daily routines. As technology integrates into all aspects of society, including travel, questions about the future of digital travel arise. Digital travel is an emerging phenomenon, with limited observations or interviews of digital travelers at vir-tual destinations. This paper aims to predict travelers’ intentions to engage in digital travel in the future, addresses a gap in the literature on digital tourism from travelers’ perspectives. To enhance ecological validity, a digital presentation of Mexico from the game Forza Horizon 5 was used, and 586 travelers from a national population were recruited. The survey included questions on digital pre-sentations of museums, attractions, and guided tours, followed by questions on the level of experiences in a digital museum, digital attractions, and a digital guided tour. Binary logistic regression was used to predict future interest in digital travel applications. The significant predictors were the level of education of the partici-pants, their response to digital guided tours, and vicarious sightseeing in Mexico. The study discusses the potential of digital travel in future vacations, suggesting that virtual experiences can complement, and sometimes even substitute, physical travel. However, digital travel appears, according to the findings, to appeal to only a small segment of travelers.