Exploring impacts of AR on group package tours: Destination image, perceived certainty, and experiential value

With the growing demand for experience, technologies such as augmented reality (AR) have been widely adopted across fields to increase individuals’ interactive experiences. In tourism, group package tours have become a common touring approach; however, research in investigating tourists’ journey experiences facilitated by modern technologies such as AR remains rare. This study aims to examine factors affecting tourists’ behavioral intentions to choose group package tours. An extended theory of the planned behavior model with three antecedents—destination image, perceived certainty, and experiential value— is posited to evaluate the potential influence of AR. Using data of 557 survey respondents, the structural equation modeling shows a good fit for the empirical results. The findings reveal that AR gives tourists access to more explicit destination images, increases the certainty of group package tours, and creates experiential value during a trip, thereby enhancing behavioral intentions to opt for a group package tour. The study concludes with theoretical and empirical implications for tourism and related industries.