Tourism evolves constantly with new trends. The
smartphone application Pokémon Go is a good example. The phenomenon was so
important that the number of daily users exceed that of Facebook, Instagram and
Snapchat. The principle of the game is to catch Pokémon by "hunting"
on the street with what we call the augmented reality. Tourism providers saw an
opportunity to catch a new market segment of customers and for this tried a
partnership with the application. For example, the Sokcho Hotelin South Korea
saw its occupancy rate increased when rare pokemons have been virtually placed
in the building. Also, some cities took advantage of it by creating tours for
players including sight visit of tourism attractions and Pokémon hunting.
However, the application have limits and face ethical
challenges. Indeed, due to the random placement of Pokémon, players cross
borders and that cause safety issues for tourism providers. Another issue is
raised in black tourism attractions where players do not respect the place and
its history. Finally, while sight tours created with the application allow
travelers to see local site, for those who raise the head from their screens,
no information is shared about the attraction.
During 6 months the application has been a real trend
that made polemic for its advantages and drawbacks. Its make us realized that
the tourism industry has to adapt itself quickly to changes event if the new
trend is just temporary. New technologies can help companies to catch more
customers.
The example of Pokémon Go shows us that augmented
reality (AR) is becoming increasingly important in the tourism industry. The
main goal of AR is to facilitate the journey of travellers and offer them a
unique experience thanks in particular to the interactivity. Planning the
perfect journey can be difficult because of the big choice of hotels online. In
order to make the difference, hotels create virtual tours to show easily their
rooms and their amenities. Another issue of the client is often the
language. AR can help people who do not understand the domestic language by
translating by just scanning the language displayed at airports for example. Finally, the last
difficulty can be the transportation. AR has the ability to indicate the best
public transit to take to a particular location. These few examples show us
that augmented reality is increasingly present in the daily life of the tourism
industry and will continue to develop.
Sources :
Perrine DEBUIRE & Clémentine LIGNIER
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