New Product Design: Creating a Digital VR Game to Promote the Conservation of Nature-based Tourism Attractions

Abstract

Mobile games and ICT-based mixed reality tools offer significant opportunities for tourism. This chapter reviews the existing literature in both these areas, and presents a novel way of combining games and virtual reality into an interpretive tool. As a complex, threatened marine ecosystem, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef faces significant interpretive challenges, and almost no new interpretive tools have been developed over the last 30 years. Here, the authors unpack the stages and interdisciplinary approach required to design the tool and highlight how it might fit within the broader scope of ICT developments in tourism. We outline areas of future research, with a particular focus on how ICT might contribute to making nature-based tourism more sustainable, by finding fun, innovative ways to engage tourists in the conservation of some of our most iconic natural assets.

Citation

Coghlan, A. and Carter, L. (2020), "New Product Design: Creating a Digital VR Game to Promote the Conservation of Nature-based Tourism Attractions", Hassan, A. and Sharma, A. (Ed.) The Emerald Handbook of ICT in Tourism and Hospitality, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 167-179. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-688-720201011