The COVID-19 pandemic allowed workplaces to become more innovative with technology. It brought unprecedented changes to the workforce and the operations of organizations. A noticeable change was the traditional ways of doing business to virtual forms of managing and operating (Alexander et al., 2020). The tourism and hospitality industry was no exception to the change. Similarly to other industries, tourism and hospitality had to rethink, rebound, and become resilient and innovative in interacting with guests and employees (Ntounis et al., 2021). One such critical innovation is the use of virtual reality (VR).
Training in the hospitality and tourism industry creates a positive influence and a well-rounded experience through service-minded staff. Bilsland et al. (2020) indicated that untrained, unmotivated, and distracted staff could result in guests’ unpleasant customer experience. Technological advances such as VR can provide the hospitality industry with new training opportunities. For example, tourism and hospitality are the main contributors to India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Employees are trained using VR to become experts in maintaining service quality (Upadhyay & Khandelwal, 2018). In the United States, the Hilton group uses Oculus VR to train its 6,000 properties on its employees on its facilities, operations, and empathy (Oculus for Business, 2020).
Human Resource Development (HRD) keeps evolving and implementing new learning and development programs and interventions. Khandelwal and Upadhyay (2021) highlighted that HR used technology primarily for automated HR functions such as payroll, interviewing, resume capture, and record-keeping, to name a few. VR brings innovation, efficiency, cost savings, and change to onboarding, learning, and development for the engagement and retention of employees (Khandelwal and Upadhyay (2021).
Despite the increased importance of using VR training in the industry, more attention is needed to review how VR functions in HRD. Therefore, this literature review study aims to examine the roles of VR for HRD in and for the tourism and hospitality industry. For this purpose, we investigate two research questions: (a) How has VR been adopted in HRD, tourism, and the hospitality industry? (b) What potential benefits can VR provide for HRD, tourism, and the hospitality industry?
Methods
In this work-in-progress literature review (Torraco, 2005, 2005b), articles were searched from the following databases: EBSCOhost, Elsevier, ProQuest, Emerald, SAGE Complete, Google Scholar, and Discovery Services. The initial keywords we used for the search were VR, HRD, training, tourism, hospitality industry, technology, trends, innovation, hotels, and resorts. The search was further narrowed using combined keywords among VR, tourism, hospitality, training, and HRD and found 447 articles. After reviewing them, we finally identified 20 journal articles closely relevant to VR training/HRD in the tourism and hospitality industry for our analysis. In addition, we further explored articles specific to the HRD academic journals, such as HRD Review, HRD International, Human Resource Development Quarterly, and Advances in Developing Human Resources. A thematic analysis of the literature review was then conducted. The following themes were identified: virtual reality benefits, virtual reality in training, virtual reality in tourism, and virtual reality in hospitality management.
Findings
VR benefits indicated travel cost-savings, engaging training, and learners’ reflection to construct new meanings for change. VR in training can create rich media and collaboration among remote employees for productivity and cohesiveness. VR in tourism allows guests’ immersion in the virtual environment creating visitor intent and generating more traffic and attention to the destination (Lee et al., 2020). VR in hospitality, the Hilton executive team members made better decisions in providing exceptional guest services for the team members. 87% of the team members changed their behavior, and classroom training was reduced from 4-hour to 20 minutes. To better answer the research questions, further analysis of the potential benefits of VR in HRD will be conducted with an additional integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005b).
Contribution and Implications
VR will transcend HRD in the tourism and hospitality sector. The study’s findings will provide academic and practical implications by revealing current practices and potential future possibilities of using VR. A future research area is to investigate millennials and gen Z’s contribution to the adaption of VR and the engagement levels of the baby boomers and gen X.
Keywords: virtual reality, human resource development (HRD), hospitality
