Digital Twin and Tourism: Recreating and Reimagining Tourist Experience by Interconnecting Physical and Virtual Systems

Digital twin (DT) is a prominent technology that can help to connect virtual and physical systems. The development of DT is mainly in manufacturing and medical services by utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) and other sensor technologies. The current study offers conceptual and critical thoughts on applying DT in the tourism context by considering the nature of the business. In challenging this conceptualisation of DT utilization, the present study explores how the tourism sector can elevate tourist experiences—cognitive, affective, conative, and sensory—through reimagining and recreating. This chapter also applies the proposed framework to the Borobudur temple in Indonesia as a use case. Theoretically, this chapter extends the existing literature on how DT can reshape and enhance tourist experiences, mixed with other emerging technologies. This research also provides some potential applications of DT for destination managers and service designers to optimize the advantages of DT for tourist destinations.