Perception of young generation on the importance and performance of gamification in tourism

Gamification is not a new concept introduced, it has been implemented not only in tourism industry but also in others field including education, business and marketing campaign and health sector. Games and entertainment centres is fun, excitement and experience industry as people are looking to more than just consoles and mobile apps for entertainment. With the fast growing of technology used, gamification seen suddenly boosted and became a trend due to millennial and gen z who seek for adventure and gamified experiences. In fact, the fundamental changes is gaming experiences have been extended into real world, and are potentially available at any place and any time. Thus, with using six principle perspective on motivational mechanisms with gamification, this study aimed to evaluate the perception of young generation on the importance and performance of gamification in tourism. A total of 99 respondents have been selected through purposive sampling technique where most of them are from young generation who born between the early 1980s and 1990s. The findings shows that young generation perceived the perspective of interest traits is the most crucial elements in gamification. This generations highly attracted towards the gamification activities due to indication of clear goals and worth rewards. Therefore, this study contributed knowledge and information to the tourism stakeholders that young generation has high tendency attracted into gamification activities while travelling to a particular destination

Review of Benefit Using Gamification Element for Countryside Tourism

Gamification theory right now has drawn researchers in many areas. This is because gamification has many effects to improve engagement, motivation, learning outcome, entertainment, etc. Gamification in tourism has an effect on tourists, places of tourism and the economy around tourist attractions. In addition, gamification can also be applied to manage workers in tourism places. How gamification can improve tourism attraction to travel to the countryside tour and the benefit of using gamification element will be discussed in this literature review. This literature review collected data about gamification element and its effect from other researchers. Data about gamification of tourism, how that work and what gamification element can support this context will be collected too. The results of this study are that the application of gamification in the tourism sector can be beneficial, ranging from visitors, managers to communities around tourist attraction

Routeing in military tourism: gamification as an implementation proposal

This dissertation approaches three main concepts, routeing applied to tourism, Military Tourism as a segment of Cultural Tourism and Gamification as a tool for tourist fruition, with the aim at establishing a link between them. Following a literature review from various authors in each of these areas, and after the establishment of a firm conceptual base, this project investigates the possible links between them. In this specific case the application of the benefits of gamification to promote the development of Military Tourism products and their organisation in military themed tourism routes. In conclusion this dissertation presents a guiding model explaining the use of different forms of game based technology to develop different Military Tourism products and how this tool can aid in the organisation in a Military Tourism Route

Encouraging persons to visit cultural sites through mini-games

Gamification has been recently proposed as a technique to improve user engagement in different activities, including visits to cultural sites and cultural tourism in general. We present the design, development and initial validation of the NEPTIS Poleis system, which consists of a mobile application and a Web interface for curators, allowing the definition, and subsequent fruition by users, of different minigames suitable for open-air assets

Can we trace back hotel online reviews’ characteristics using gamification features?

Gamification is here to stay, and tourism and hospitality online review platforms are taking advantage of it to attract travelers and motivate them to contribute to their websites. Yet, literature in tourism is scarce in studying how effectively is users’ behavior changing through gamification features. This research aims at filling such gap through a data-driven approach based on a large volume of online reviews (a total of 67,685) collected from TripAdvisor between 2016 and 2017. Four artificial neural networks were trained to model title and review's word length, and title and review's sentiment score, using as input 12 gamification features used in TripAdvisor including points and badges. After validating the accuracy of the model for extracting knowledge, the data-based sensitivity analysis was applied to understand how each of the 12 features contributed to explaining review length and its sentiment score. Three badge features were considered the most relevant ones, including the total number of badges, the passport badges, and the explorer badges, providing evidence of a relation between gamification features and traveler's behavior when writing reviews.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

GoRace: A Multi-Context and Narrative-Based Gamification Suite to Overcome Gamification Technological Challenges

Gamification is a potential approach to foster motivation and engagement in different contexts which popularity in recent years has encouraged its application in a diversity of domains, including health, education, business, society, or tourism. However, although all their promising benefits and rapidly developing, the gamification community should face a variety of theoretical, empirical, and technological challenges. Focusing on technological challenges, we can observe a need that claims for suitable gamification software tools that offer system-independence and flexibility, support the gamification design, implementation, and monitoring activities, and experiment with more game elements than only points, badges, and leaderboards. For that reason, this paper deals with the identified technological challenges by introducing a gamification software tool to cover the main lacks found. An analysis of the advances in gamification domain and their recent literature was conducted to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular gamification software tools in order to design and develop a flexible system-independent gamification software solution that goes beyond the implementation of the classic game elements. As a result, we created GoRace, a multi-context and narrative-based gamification suite that supports the entire gamification process, provides flexible and system-independent gamification solutions, and allows the creation of tailored and reusable gamification solutions that go beyond the classic game elements to immerse participants in a fun, engaging, and challenging narrative-based gamification experience

Serious games and the gamification of tourism

Gamification has become a focus of attention in an increasing number of fields including business, education, and health care. Through a wide range of applications and support functions, its potential for the tourism industry is significant. Gamification of tourism can contribute to a more rewarding interactions and higher level of satisfaction, as well as increase brand awareness and loyalty to the destination. As one of the first attempts to conceptualize gamification of tourism, this paper examines gaming in general terms and the application of it in specific tourism fields. It identifies game design elements that can contribute to a meaningful gamification. A few cases of best practices are presented to show how this innovative concept can benefit tourism marketing. Implications for tourism marketing and management are discussed as well as future research recommendations

Tourism and Simulacrum: The Computational Economy of Algorithmic Destinations

AbstractThe paper establishes a conceptual and methodological link between destinations and simulacrum through gamified tourism. As a paradigm, gamified tourism provides a rationale and a setting within which to apply computational economics to tourism, an approach amounting to tourism computability. Algorithmic destinations serve as “petri dishes” for real destinations. Utilizing rule sets that embody destination growth dynamics and visitor behavioural norms, seeding points in a cellular automata model (CA) were grown into algorithmic destinations. This is followed by a morphological transformation of geo-tagged satellite images into spatial points. The overlap of this additive and subtractive approach is at the core of tourism computability. Finally, the spatio-temporal dynamics of economic resilience was traced out through a visual phenomenology of algorithmic destinations. The gamification of tourism should be embraced as it holds up a flicker of hope for mature destinations, amidst the onset of museumification and increased commoditization of heritage sites. Gamification is treated as part of the reflexive cycle for destination authenticity; a notion that that Cohen (1988) alluded to in his discussion of emergent authenticity in destination image formation. Seen in this light, the museumification of Venice and the proliferation of its simulacrum, such as the Venetian Hotel in Macao and Venice-themed hotels across the globe, are prefigures and archetypes of a glorious age of gamified tourism

ICT and gamified learning in tourism education: a case of South African secondary schools

Tourism is often introduced as a subject in formal education curricula because of the increasing and significant economic contribution of the tourism industry to the private and public sector. This is especially the case in emerging economies in Asia and Africa (Hsu, 2015; Mayaka & Akama, 2015; Cuffy et al., 2012). Tourism in South Africa – which is the geographical setting of this research – is recognised as a key economic sector. At secondary level, tourism has been widely introduced at schools throughout South Africa since 2000 and has experienced significant growth (Umalusi, 2014). Furthermore, information and communication technology (ICT) has rapidly penetrated public and private sectors of the country. ICT affords novel opportunities for social and economic development, and this has especially been observed in the fields of both tourism and education (Anwar et al., 2014; Vandeyar, 2015). Yet, the many uses and implications of ICT for tourism education in South Africa are unclear and under-theorised as a research area (Adukaite, Van Zyl, & Cantoni, 2016). Moreover, engagement has been identified as a significant indicator of student success in South Africa (Council for Higher Education, 2010). Lack of engagement contributes to poor graduation rates at secondary and tertiary institutions in South Africa (Strydom et al., 2010; Titus & Ng’ambi, 2014). A common strategy to address lack of student engagement is introducing game elements into the learning process: the so-called gamification of learning (Kapp, 2012). The majority of research in this field has been conducted in more economically advanced and developed regions, and there is a paucity of research in emerging country contexts. It is argued that gamification can be effectively utilised also in these contexts to address learner engagement and motivation. This study aims to contribute in this respect: firstly, by investigating the extent to which ICT supports tourism education in South African high schools through the lenses of Technology Domestication Theory (Habib, 2005; Haddon, 2006) and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977). Secondly, the study aims to examine gamified learning acceptance within tourism education in a developing country context. The research assimilates three separate studies. Study 1. The Role of Digital Technology in Tourism Education: A Case Study of South African Secondary Schools The study was designed as an exploratory analysis, based on 24 in-depth interviews (n=24) with high school tourism teachers and government officials. An analysis reveals that teachers recognize ICT as essential in exposing students to the tourism industry. This is especially the case in under-resourced schools, where learners do not have the financial means to participate in tourism activities. However, ICT is still limited in its integration as a pedagogical support tool. The major obstacles toward integration include: technology anxiety, lack of training, availability of resources, and learner resistance to use their personal mobile devices. Study 2. Raising Awareness and Promoting Informal Learning on World Heritage in Southern Africa. The Case of WHACY, a Gamified ICT-enhanced Tool The goal of the study was to present the World Heritage Awareness Campaign for Youth (WHACY) in Southern Africa. A campaign was dedicated to raise awareness and foster informal learning among Southern African youth about the heritage and sustainable tourism. The campaign employed an online and offline gamified learning platform, which was supported by a dedicated website, Facebook page, wiki and offline materials. In one year of operation the campaign reached more than 100K audience. For the evaluation of the campaign, a mixed methods approach was used: focus groups with students (n=9), interviews (n=19) and a survey with teachers (n=209). The study attempted to assess user experience in terms of engagement and conduciveness to learning and explored the possibility of a gamified application to be integrated into the existing high school tourism curriculum. The perspectives of South African tourism students and teachers were here considered. Study 3. Teacher perceptions on the use of digital gamified learning in tourism education: The case of South African secondary schools. The study is quantitative in nature and investigated the behavioural intention of South African tourism teachers to integrate a gamified application within secondary tourism education. Data collected from 209 teachers were tested against the research model using a structural equation modelling approach. The study investigated the extent to which six determined predictors (perceptions about playfulness, curriculum relatedness, learning opportunities, challenge, self-efficacy and computer anxiety) influence the acceptance of a gamified application by South African tourism teachers. The study may prove useful to educators and practitioners in understanding which determinants may influence gamification introduction into formal secondary education