A preliminary study of VR English training material for personnel in the tourism industry

As the COVID-19 pandemic settles, foreign visitors to Japan are expected to outnumber inbound tourists number before the pandemic. However, a shortage of personnel with proper English skills demands English training programs for hospitality service personnel in the tourism industry. In this study, the authors developed a prototype of a virtual reality (VR) training material for hospitality service personnel to practice and experience tough communication scenarios in English. The material's impacts were explored by monitoring changes in frontal brain hemoglobin concentration and heart rates of subjects who engaged in VR training and conversation sessions with an English conversation trainer. The measurements of the physiological data obtained from the subjects before and after they underwent VR training showed that the subjects tended to be more relaxed when they responded to difficult English conversations after the training. The results show that VR training materials can reduce the anxiety of hospitality service personnel who must engage in English communication at a hotel front or a restaurant, and this type of learning material is expected to be effectively used in the tourism industry from the perspective of employee education.