Virtual Tourism in the Peri-and-Post COVID-19 Era: Understanding How Experiential Media Are Utilized in the Making of “Qatar 2022”

In this study, we examine how and the degree to which Experiential Media (EM) are utilized to promote travel, sports, and, more broadly, cultural tourism in EM contents produced in the buildup to the 22nd FIFA World Cup to be hosted by Qatar in 2022, the first Arab nation to host the World Cup. Three YouTube channels were considered for this study, namely: Road To 2022, Al Jazeera Contrast, and Qatar Airways. Using a virtual reality head-mounted display and the model of EM framework, we found that all of the nine productions featured limited use of the six qualities of EM. We identified three broad thematic categories: 1) FIFA stadium and travel, 2) use of cutting-edge technology, and 3) Qatar’s history and traditions, and many sub-themes pertaining to travel, lifestyle, and more. We provide practical and managerial implications of EM contents for the tourism industry, sports tourism, and destination marketing.


Introduction
Immersive storytelling is transforming international tourism and how countries promote their national identity. This study looks at how Qatar is using immersive storytelling in the form of Experiential Media (EM) to communicate and promote its role as host of FIFA World Cup 2022. EM refers to communication provides an opportunity for the user/audience to experience the story in a firstperson perspective and heightens the sense of "presence" (Jin, 2011). Considering the potential of EM in presenting stories related to such mega-sporting events, in this study, we set out to explore the territory of immersive storytelling in the context of Qatar as the host of FIFA World Cup 2022.

Review of Literature
In the early 1990s, the use of VR was limited to six classes of potential applications, i.e., medical visualization, maintenance and repair, annotation, robot path planning, entertainment, and military aircraft navigation and targeting (Azuma, 1997). Fast forward to 2021, a growing body of research indicates that EM technologies such as AR, VR, and 360˚ videos are diffusing rapidly and widely around the world, thereby transforming user experience, practices related to sports, tourism, and hospitality management.

VR Applications and Implications for Tourism
An increasing number of scholarly works relating to tourism management show the use of EM, particularly VR. In the tourism context, Hobson and Williams (1995) situate VR as an "interactive digital-generated medium" that has the potential to enable the users to create simulated experiences of unreal environments using a head-mounted display (HMD). Studies have further explored this interactive nature of VR with respect to tourism, including how the technology can reduce tourists' perceived anxiety or risk with an unfamiliar destination. For example, Lee and Oh (2007) found that a hotel website with VR functions could lead to a reduction in users' anxiety about travel. Similarly, Kim et al. (2018), in their study exploring consumer behavior in VR tourism, found that 1) consumers' intention to visit places shown in VR tourism was influenced by their attachment to VR, and 2) the cognitive response had a stronger influence than the affective response on the intention to visit a destination promoted in VR.
In terms of the VR applications and implications for tourism, Guttentag (2010) highlights that 1) planning and management, 2) marketing, 3) entertainment, 4) education, 5) accessibility, and 6) heritage preservation are six areas of tourism in which VR may prove particularly valuable. In their study, Loureiro et al. (2020) conducted a full-text analysis of 56 journal papers and 325 conference proceedings related to VR and AR in the tourism context spanning over 20 years of research. The researchers found ten core topics in the journal papers, including atmospherics design, smart cities and cultural heritage, seminal and trend papers, location-based information and image quality, mobile uses for sustainable tourism, tourism destination marketing, TAM, experiential and telepresence, case study applications, augmented reality; and eleven core topics in conference proceedings including virtual communities, tourism destination marketing, mixed reality museums, location-based information systems, atmospherics design, 3D digitalization, augmented reality, image quality, experiential and telepresence, cultural heritage, case study application. Bec et al. (2021), considering the dete-rioration of attractions, landmarks, artifacts, and destinations, which is a critical issue facing tourism worldwide, introduce the concept of Second Chance Tourism and the role of innovative preservation methods such as VR and MR. Vishwakarma et al. (2020), in the study exploring travelers' intention to adopt VR, utilized a value-based adoption model (VAM) to examine the responses of 208 Indian tourists and showed the importance of perceived immersion and perceived physical risk as to the two most vital indicators of benefits and sacrifice, respectively. Bec et al.'s (2019) study on the management of immersive heritage tourism experiences showed the potential of AR and VR in creating memorable tourism experiences for heritage tourism and proposed a conceptual model of heritage preservation for managing heritage in digital tourism experiences. Lee et al.'s (2020) study showed that the VR content quality, system quality, and vividness positively influence customers' attitude and telepresence, leading to their positive behavioral intention to visit the destination.
Using VR experiences as triggers for the development of wine tourism and considering the relevance of Portugal's Douro Valley to the country's wine tourism segment, Martins et al. (2017) developed a theoretical model that supports the implementation of multisensory virtual wine tourism experiences. In a study on the impact of innovation and gratification on authentic experience, subjective well-being, and behavioral intention in tourism VR, Kim et al. (2020) tested a theoretical framework based on the diffusion of innovations and uses and gratifications theories to explain why people participate in VR tourism. The researcher's highlight that the authentic experience and subjective well-being are affected by simplicity, benefit, and compatibility, which are the attributes of diffusion of innovations theory, as well as informativeness, social interactivity, and playfulness, which are the attributes of uses and gratifications theory. Cranmer et al. (2020) explored the perceived value of AR for the tourism industry from the perspective of tourism experts. Using a qualitative and exploratory approach involving fifteen interviews with tourism experts, the researchers identified five value dimensions, including: 1) marketing, 2) economic, 3) tourist, 4) epistemic, and 5) organizational. These findings provide important implications for strategy development, AR implementation, and tourist experience design. Tussyadiah et al. (2018) identified several positive consequences of the sense of presence in VR experiences relating to tourism, based on the two experimental studies conducted in Hong Kong in the United Kingdom. The researchers found that: 1) feelings of being in the virtual environment (i.e., telepresence) increase enjoyment of VR experiences; 2) the heightened feelings of being there result in stronger liking and preference in the destination, and; 3) positive attitude change leads to a higher level of visitation intention. These findings speak to the efficacy of VR in inducing positive Second Chance Tourism (Bec et al., 2021) experiences.

VR Tourism and COVID-19
The pandemic has led to a great reduction in actual travel and the rise of virtual  (2021), in their study on virtual tours' role in tourism recovery post-COVID-19, gathered data from 401 respondents who experienced at least one of the virtual tours simulating Egyptian heritage sites and showed that both TAM and protective action decision model (PADM) models are effective in predicting user's intention to adopt virtual tours and the adoption intention has a positive impact on the tendency to visit the actual site. The researchers also provide practical implications for site managers to consider when opting for virtual tours as a promotional tool or as an alternative during health crises like COVID-19. Zeng et al. (2020) examined the direct and interaction effects of both the quality and quantity of online reviews and VR on consumers' hotel booking. Zeng et al. (2020) found that the influence of online reviews on behavioral intention was weakened when VR was applied. Zeng et al. concluded that the online reviews and VR had a significant combined effect on behavioral intention, with greater synergy than online reviews alone. The findings provide insights for travel and tourism managers to enhance marketing communication effects by proper use of VR to complement online reviews. Chiao et al. (2018) examined the usability of an online virtual tour-guiding platform for cultural tourism education. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, the researchers conducted a study of students from a technological university in Taiwan and found the results indicating learning effectiveness and technology acceptance within the education system.
In a study of VR presence as a preamble of tourism experience and the role of mental imagery, Bogicevic et al. (2019) examined how VR can deliver integrated tourist experiences prior to actual stays at a hotel. Using a lab-coordinated experiment with three hotel previews that differ in their level of interactivity (images vs. 360˚ tours vs. VR tours), the researchers found that a VR preview induces higher elaboration of mental imagery about the experience and a stronger sense of presence compared to both the 360˚ preview and images preview, thereby translating into an enhanced brand experience. The study also shows that VR is substantial in prompting tourists to "daydream" about lodging offers prior to experiencing them at the destination's premises.
A majority of scholarly work provides deeper insights on how users interact with and react to such immersive experiences, the potential impact of VR on the tourism industry, and the efficacy of VR use in tourism, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, limited scholarly work is available in terms of a qualitative analysis of the immersive contents themselves-specifically, 1) to what extent immersive contents utilize EM qualities and 2) what themes EM content productions feature regarding sports and cultural tourism. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring EM content productions about the FIFA World Cup, a mega-sporting event commencing in 2022 in Qatar. To this end, the present study seeks to answer the following three research

Methodology
This study utilizes a qualitative content analysis to obtain a nuanced understanding of how Qatar is utilizing immersive storytelling based on EM in the promotion of the hosting of FIFI 2022. This method involves identifying selected immersive storytelling content produced in advance of the tournament and posted online and then assessing each immersive content production in terms of the extent to which the six qualities of EM are present. This qualitative investigation seeks to understand how EM content produced by the Road To 2022, AJ Contrast, and Qatar Airways in light of "Qatar 2022" utilize EM qualities. For this interpretive research (i.e., narrative and descriptive), we examine nine different 360˚ videos from three YouTube channels: 1) the Road To 2022, the official YouTube Channel of Qatar's FIFA World Cup 2022; 2) Al Jazeera Contrast or AJ Contrast, a Digital division of Al Jazeera Media Network funded by Qatari Government; and 3) Qatar Airways, a Qatari government-owned flag carrier.
We chose these three platforms (sports, media, and travel) because they represent Qatar's interests and the nation's attempts to use EM in the dynamic process of nation branding and destination marketing. All the nine 360˚ videos (henceforth called EM content throughout this paper) on YouTube VR application were experienced through an Oculus Quest 2, VR Head-Mounted Display (HMD) for a truly immersive VR experience (where the HMD provides a stereoscopic 360˚ view along with 3D surround sound and comes with haptics controllers to experience the EM content). However, these EM content can be viewed on any smart-phone or laptop without an HMD on a YouTube website or mobile application (where the user has to manually scroll the rectangular window of the YouTube viewer either on a smartphone, tablet, or computer to see different parts of the 360˚ scene).
A three-step methodology was employed in the current content analysis.
Step 1 is identifying the EM contents produced with regard to Qatar 2022.
Step 2 is to experience/observe such EM contents.
Step 3 is to identify prominent themes that are manifested in EM contents identified for this study. This methodology was designed for the present study to analyze the EM content posted on the Road To 2022, AJ Contrast and Qatar Airways YouTube platforms. We conducted Steps 1 and 2, identifying and experiencing the EM contents, during October 2021.  Table 1. Of the five EM content productions, two were identical in terms of visuals and duration, hence a total of four EM content productions were considered for this study from the Road To 2022 YouTube channel.

AJ Contrast YouTube Channel: Al Jazeera Contrast or AJ Contrast YouTube
Channel was started in 2017 to use cutting-edge technologies to amplify stories of unrepresented communities hit hardest by conflict and inequality. As of October 30, 2021, AJ Contrast YouTube Channel had about 2.74 K subscribers and 745,858 total views on the channel. The search for total videos on the channel yielded a result of 127 videos, of which 88 were EM content productions. Of the  Table 3.

Experience/Observe EM Content (Step 2)
Pavlik's (2018) model of EM focuses on six primary qualities of digital media environments: 1) interactivity, 2) immersion, 3) multi-sensory presentation, 4) algorithm and data, 5) first-person perspective, and 6) natural user interface. This model provides a framework to understand how EM transforms the role of the audience to a more active user who experiences stories as a participant rather than an audience member who tends to passively watch, listen, or read the narrative from a third-person's perspective. EM enables the user to experience the medium and participate or engage in a story or content itself as a virtual phenomenon.

Analysis of the Themes (Step 3)
Based on the observations recorded from the EM contents, and notes from the memos, we identified dominant themes highlighted by such EM content. In this step, we also identified different themes covered by the Road To 2022 compared to that of contents posted on AJ Contrast and Qatar Airways YouTube channels.

Analysis of EM Content
Road To 2020 YouTube Channel Below are the observations from four EM contents identified from "Road To 2022" YouTube Channel: Lusail Stadium 360˚ Experience-Qatar 2022. Lusail Iconic Stadium or Lusail National Stadium is a stadium under construction in Lusail, a city in Qatar. The stadium is one of the host sites for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. This EM content involves a virtually created artistic impression of the Lusail Stadium and some real footage of people in Qatar. The opening of the EM content welcomes the user to take a journey to be one of the first to see what a best fan day experience would be. The user also gets to experience both the aerial perspective and a perspective from the stadium seating area filled with spectators.
In terms of the EM qualities this EM content utilizes, we found the storyline to be from the first-person perspective as if the user is inside the stadium, which features traditional Middle East architecture. The EM content also features state of the art technology on display inside the stadium, including the opportunity to take Holographic selfies with the football players; a virtual mirror where the fans can try their favorite football team's jersey and purchase the same and use of smartphone technology to enter the stadium or place food from the spectators seating area inside the Lusail National Stadium, as shown in Figure 1. Advances in Journalism and Communication In terms of the duration, this EM content is among the longest (4:18 mins).
The use of a first-person narrative storyline and the wide array of visual creativity made it a memorable virtual experience. This EM content was also the most   Al Janoub Stadium in 360˚-Qatar 2022. As shown in Figure 4, Al-Janoub Stadium, formerly known as Al-Wakrah Stadium, is a football stadium built in the year 2019 in Al-Wakrah city in Qatar. Similar to the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium and Education City Stadium, this EM content, which is a minute-long in duration, also uses a first-person narrative, where the user is given a grand tour of the stadium, including both indoor and outdoor tour at the ground level (i.e., human-eye level). This EM content involves a 360˚ pan for each location, thereby causing forced movement. Unlike the previous EM content productions, the Al-Janoub Stadium EM content opens with Al-Wakrah's largest green space, highlighting that most of Qatar's geographical area is a flat, low-lying desert. The EM content also shows the running and cycling tracks outside the stadium arena. The content does highlight the stadium architecture, which is designed by Advances in Journalism and Communication Zaha Hadid architects. The content shows how Qatar laid a green pitch in a record time, including growing grass in Qatar rather than importing it. The user also gets to experience how the stadium is ready to host the world's best football teams. Only 3 DoF was observed in this immersive content. This EM content overall utilized real footage of the stadium with no artistically created visuals or representation of the stadium on the matchday and lacked the use of ambience sound, which is a key "ingredient" for a fully immersive experience. Meanwhile, the EM content had a total of 1,235,903 views and 272 comments as of October 30, 2021.

AJ Contrast YouTube Channel
Below are the observations from two EM content identified from AJ Contrast YouTube Channel: Camel Racing in Doha, Qatar in 360˚ Video. As shown in Figure 5, this EM content features the most expensive sport in Qatar, i.e., camel racing, which uses both traditional sporting practices and modern technology. This 2:28 minutes long content invites a user to experience camels racing in the desert track specially created for this sport in Doha, Qatar. The story uses both first-person perspective and third-person perspective narrative. In the opening of the content, the user gets to experience a 360˚ view of the racetrack and camels racing for a prize that includes a golden sword, money, and luxury cars. The user gets to share a car with a Qatari national who also happens to own a camel and narrates the story and history behind camel racing. The Qatari national takes the user on a ride alongside the racetrack, where the camels are racing. We experienced the story from the car window perspective and as crowd members inside the race, where the user was also invited through this immersive experience to see how advanced technology like robot jockeys are used for camel racing. The use of Arabian background music with ambiance sound, including the desert sounds and sounds from the racetrack, added to the overall EM content experience and heightened the sense of presence. Only 3 DoF was observed in this immersive content. Despite the truly immersive experience offered by the EM content, we observed 2156 views and two comments on the video as of October 30, 2021. Though this content features traditional Qatari sport, the EM content does not include any information or visuals about Qatar as the host of FIFA World Cup 2022. Pearls of the Past. As shown in Figure 6, this 6:27 minutes duration which is the longest among the nine EM content productions considered for this study, is   Qatar's capital. We observed latency in terms of one 360˚ photo to another; hence, we did not feel the sense of presence and the immersive qualities offered by EM. The content was also not interactive, though it did include 3DOF similar to other immersive content but lacked ambiance sound despite featuring real location and people. We also observed that the content tries to show how the Sky Table suspended in  Themes identified from observations and memos are presented in Table 4.

Findings from the Analysis of Themes
The analysis of the themes as shown in Table 4 and Table 5, the Road To 2022 EM content productions predominantly focuses on the stadium design that is futuristic and inspired by traditional Middle Eastern art. The themes resonated with the adoption of state-of-the-art technology in the stadium for a unique matchday experience during the FIFA World Cup 2022.
The themes from AJ Contrast predominantly focus on the traditional sports and lifestyle of Qatar. Some important themes include camel racing and pearl diving. The themes also included a wide range of topics, including robot jockeys, the discovery of oil, luxury housing, and lifestyle and luxury cars.  The themes from Qatar Airways predominantly focus on luxury and longdistance travel. Other important themes focused on Hotels, Spa, Dining in Qatar and the state-of-the-art airports and their design inspired by the waves of the Arabian Gulf.

Key Findings
This study is based on empirical observations from nine EM content produc- All of the EM content productions utilized only 3 DoF (i.e., the user can look about but not move about). The majority of the content productions lacked utilizing all of the six qualities of EM: 1) interactivity, 2) immersion, 3) multi-sensory presentation, 4) algorithm and data, 5) first-person perspective, and 6) natural user interface (Pavlik, 2018). Most used only limited interactivity, immersion, sight and sound (with limited haptics), and first-person perspective.
With regard to multisensory engagement utilized in all the nine EM content productions, since we experienced the content on Oculus Quest 2 HMD, the process of viewing the EM content involved the use of haptics-enabled controllers to pause, play, forward, rewind, etc., where the controllers made vibrations (i.e., send haptic feedback every time the controller buttons were triggered). The fact that Quest 2 has inbuilt speakers with 3D sound enhanced the overall immersive experience with a sense of multisensory engagement. This might not be an immersive experience for those who experience this EM content on smartphones or laptops. Overall, we observed that there was zero latency (i.e., no delay) in consumption of all the nine EM content productions. However, the observation showed no use of other sensory modalities such as gaze (eye-gaze-based interaction) or voice commands as use of natural user interface in all the nine EM content productions.
The findings from the analysis of themes show that Qatar could feature more content about its other traditional sports (which were not covered in the nine EM content productions), such as Arabian horse racing and falconry (Al Shaqab, 2021;Gulf Times, 2019). Qatar also has been the host to many other international sports, including basketball, cricket, golf, handball, motor racing, powerboating, etc., and these could be presented via EM platforms. With Qatar being the host of FIFA World Cup 2022 and the fact that it invites nearly half the world's population, we contend there is an opportunity for Qatar to more fully utilize EM potential and use immersive platforms in order to also showcase its stories both about hosting and competing in past sporting events. The analysis of themes also showed that Qatar could present stories of its athletes through immersive VR experiences.

Theoretical Contributions and Managerial Implications
While a majority of the scholarly work outlined in our review of literature provides a deeper understanding (respondents' data analyzed using theoretical frameworks offered by various models such as TAM, VAM, PADM, UTAUT, etc.) on how users/travelers intend to adopt VR for virtual tourism to create memorable travel experiences, our research contributes to the literature on sports tourism, by adding theoretical discussions of the role EM play in the dynamic process of nation branding and destination marketing. Our research also provides practical and managerial implications for the tourism industry, sports tourism, and destination marketing. Using the experiential media (EM) model, we were able to take a qualitative content analysis approach to understand how and to what extent immersive content productions utilize experiential media qualities and highlight popular themes from such immersive content produced in a build-up to the mega-sporting event FIFA commencing in 2022 in Qatar.
While leisurely camel riding on the vast deserts is one of the popular tourism features in Qatar, considering the novelty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) has issued warnings on dromedary camels, or Arabian camels as a major reservoir host for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), we propose a VR-based camel riding as an alternative tourism product. We would also like to highlight the marketing implications of "VR-based selfies/groupies with the football stars" and "football star locker rooms" in relation to athletic celebrity endorsement in sports marketing. In terms of the use of EM as a tool for "nation branding", we would like the highlight the observations from Lusail National Stadium where the EM content puts the user in a first-person perspective-as if the user is walking inside the stadium and exploring the architectural marvel where the stadium has a futuristic design, and yet it is inspired by the work of traditional Middle Eastern artisans; observing people taking a Holographic selfie with their favorite Football Player; and how individuals could try a football jersey of their favorite team on a virtual mirror for virtual shopping placed inside the stadium, shows not only how Qatar is building the most technologically advanced stadiums in the world to host FIFA World Cup 2022, but how EM can be used a tool to create and promote a distinct self-image and international recognition that serves Qatar's interest.
In view of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup and the potential for VR tourism, we would also like to highlight findings from another study (Pavlik et al., 2021) that examined the usage of AR and VR in Qatar. The results of a nationally rep-S. R. Iyer et al. resentative survey conducted in Qatar in the year 2020 provide clear evidence that Qataris and expatriate professionals alike have some awareness of and engagement with EM platforms, in particular AR and VR. The study also showed significant interest in and use of the EM (both AR and VR), and findings also show there has been an increase in EM use overall since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In view of the above findings, we would also like to highlight the importance of inclusion of EM experiences on Qatar's popular travel destinations (as part of the Qatar 2022 narrative) such as Souq Waqif marketplace in Doha, Doha Corniche waterfront, EM experience on The Pearl-Qatar in Doha, an artificial island spanning nearly four-square kilometers, etc., all in line with COVID-19 and travel restrictions and considering EM's potential to take tourists on a virtual journey.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
Several limitations of the current research need to be discussed to provide directions for this line of future research. First, data triangulation through supplementary quantitative data collection (surveys and experiments among virtual tourists, actual tourists, and global consumers) will help replicate the current findings using multiple methodologies. Second, more sophisticated measures of the viewers' different types of feelings of presence (Jin, 2011) via self-report surveys and experiments will boost theoretical contributions of our work to the literature on presence. Furthermore, systematic examination of self-presence (the extent to which the virtual self is experienced as the actual self), social presence (the extent to which users feel as if they were actually co-present with virtual others, such as football stars in the relevant context of Qatar 2022), physical presence (the extent to which virtual objects were experienced as actual objects, such as virtual sportswear and products in sports marketing), and spatial presence (the extent to which consumers feel as if they were transported to the virtual space, such as Hamad International Airport and various football stadiums, in preparation for their visit to the host country) via self-report surveys will provide managerial implications for sports tourism and destination marketing. Also, measures of audiences' perception and evaluation of Qatar as a nation brand (e.g., brand personality and brand image) and consequent intention to visit/revisit Qatar before, during, and after the FIFA World Cup 2022 will empower us to test formal hypotheses about the relationship between VR/AR/MR and user experience (UX) outcomes in the relevant context of nation branding and destination marketing. Data collection among visitors to Qatar during the actual event "Qatar 2022" will provide valuable insights on real consumer experiences, virtual tourism management, and sports marketing. Third, experimental studies comparing UX after the exposure to the content delivered via AR/VR/MR (treatment condition) versus traditional media (comparison condition) will enable us to verify the causal effects of EM on the outcome variables relevant to sports tourism, destination marketing, and tourism management.