Pokémon GO is serious leisure that increases the touristic engagement, physical activity and sense of happiness of players

© 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. This study investigates Pokémon Go as a form of serious leisure including its impact on the touristic engagement, physical activity and sense of happiness of players. This location-aware augmented reality mobile game continues to be played by millions of people every day. Based on an online survey identifying 438 Pokémon GO players from 34 countries the present study examines if playing Pokémon GO sends people to locations, cities and countries beyond their normal sphere of activity and makes them feel happier and more successful. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and regression were used to analyze data. Results show that playing the networked game on a mobile device increases visitation to local tourism attractions, and motivates people to spend more time outdoors and walking. It also sends them to cities and countries they might not otherwise visit and acts as an alternative to spending time indoors playing computer games. Surveyed players feel happier and more successful after playing the game. Pokémon GO might have value as the center of a tourism product for those players. The opportunity to acquire Pokémon and encounter others involved in the game across a destination, or in a single attraction, could pull players to that place. These are the attributes of people in pursuit of serious leisure

Relationships and the tourism experience: challenges for quality-of-life assessments

The centrality of positive relationships to human well-being is firmly established in numerous fields of social science enquiry. Tourists too are centrally concerned with relationships. For tourists, the relationships may be ongoing or the interactions may be initiated during the holiday period. This chapter reviews the influences of a variety of relationships, the tourism contexts in which they occur and the role of these interactions on the well-being of travellers. It will describe, in turn, the relationships tourists have in large groups and crowds as well as in smaller specialist travel parties. Travel relationships for volunteers and for backpackers will be considered. Links between quality-of-life considerations and relationships will also be reviewed for the disabled, for gay men, for women in general, as well as for those who travel alone. Some of the quality-of-life implications which stem from these dynamic relationships include reducing stress, fostering identity, adding to skills and character strengths and building an emotional preparedness to be receptive to others. Explanations of these positive travel benefits for well-being are described in terms of the physiology of stress reduction, theories of emotional capacity, mindfulness and the value of the savouring of experiences. It is argued that the area of interest can be advanced by defining travel parties in terms of their social relationships. The outcomes of tourism for these groups need to be assessed carefully with a rich mix of timely data collection exercises, including not just individual survey work but also an array of approaches built on memory work, examining blogs and exploring multi-person and multi-perspective views of the enduring positive consequences of travel