From Virtual Tours to Digital Twins: Expectation Calibration as the Missing Link Between Hospitality Communication, Distribution, and Service Quality

This conceptual paper re-imagines the application scenario of immersive technologies not merely as promotional add-ons or experiential devices, but as integral components of a hotel’s service communication and distribution architecture. Drawing upon information richness theory, signaling theory, information asymmetry, and transaction cost economics—with expectation-confirmation logic providing the link to during- and post-purchase outcomes—the paper conceptualizes hospitality digital twins as data-connected interfaces that illustrate heterogeneous offers, reduce pre-purchase uncertainty, support direct bookings, and align marketing communication with service-quality management through expectation calibration. An illustrative review of current immersive-technology providers reveals that commercial offerings predominantly remain limited to basic visualization or promotional gimmicks with minimal connections to booking engines, CRM systems, analytics, or quality-management processes. In contrast, the theoretical analysis demonstrates that the true value of a hospitality digital twin extends far beyond visual realism toward a combination of richer information, verifiability, and deep system integration. By distinguishing visualization-only virtual tours from data-enriched interfaces and fully integrated digital twins, this paper highlights expectation calibration as the core mechanism through which pre-purchase transparency enhances trust, channel choice, booking quality, and post-purchase service outcomes. Consequently, hotel managers should approach digital twins as next-generation customer journey infrastructure rather than isolated promotional novelties, while future empirical studies across laboratory and field settings are encouraged to test how varying levels of interface integration affect guest satisfaction, complaint reduction, and direct distribution performance.