Larissa Neuburger, Teaching & Research Associate at FHWien der WKW, shared her experiences in XR in tourism as an expert in a panel discussion at one of the world’s most important conferences in Extended Reality.
Fotocredits: © Natalie Saugspier, WienIT, © AWE EU 2024
The AWE Conference 2024 (Augmented World Expo) is one of the world’s most important conferences in Extended Reality (XR) and took place in Vienna from October 29 to 30, 2024. This year’s conference offered groundbreaking insights into the latest developments and applications of XR technologies. Larissa Neuburger, Teaching & Research Associate at FHWien der WKW in Communication Management and Marketing & Sales Management was invited as an expert to a panel discussion to share her experiences and perspectives in “XR in Tourism”. The researcher is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Tourism Science.
Bringing history and culture to life through AR/VR
Invited by the Austrian Business Agency and AI Austria, Larissa Neuburger highlighted the special opportunities and challenges presented by XR technologies in the Austrian tourism sector in the panel “XR in Europe: Client Stories from Austria”. She showed how immersive experiences through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can bring history, culture and local narratives to life – and thus not only enrich tourism experiences, but also promote curiosity and lifelong learning.
In addition to the panel discussions, the conference offered numerous highlights. The inspiring keynote speech on the symbiosis of artificial intelligence (AI) and XR technologies provided an outlook on upcoming technological breakthroughs. Practical tests of the latest AR glasses also illustrated the rapid development in this area.
These valuable insights from AWE 2024 underline the relevance of XR in the tourism and education sector and provide important impetus for future projects. We look forward to the upcoming developments and to pursuing the innovations that Larissa Neuburger brought back from the conference in our research and practice!