How cities have designed their treasure hunt games to promote local tourism with Questario.
Goal
- Unfold secret places and sites of the city
- Popularize the city’s tourist attractions
- Create a discount offer for specific destinations
- Provide virtual guidance for an engaging experiences
- Collaborate with local companies
Idea
- A digital game that can be used by anyone and any time by going to a customized link address using smart devices – computer, phone or tablet.
- Players hunt city treasures by solving riddles and complete tasks by adding photos, scanning QR codes, watching videos, trivia etc.
- For each task players get points and fight for best score.
- After completing the city hunt, both digital and physical rewards are offered.
Background
Tourist centers and agencies must constantly look for new ideas on how to most effectively attract people to the places and opportunities they offer. Tourism includes various factors: entertainment, cultural heritage, business, consumption of experience, guidance, authenticity, etc. In addition, the number of potential customers in local tourism is determined by its availability and consumption of time resources.
For these reasons, it was important to look for a solution that is able to cover all (or most) of these aspects, offering visitors a comprehensive and modern tourism experience that meets their expectations. At the same time, tourist centers needed a solution that would make them profitable, involve local services and companies, as well as promote the overall popularity of the area.
Strategy
The intent: to implement technology, multimedia and gamification elements into city tourism for creating an exciting and interactive game for both city guests and locals, as well as work with different partners and make the tourist activities accessible.
This approach has been applied to: offer a unique experience that fully engages participants; allow to present the city in a way that suits the game creators; promote specific tourist destinations and attractions; collaborate with local businesses and sponsors. These objectives were ment to bring valuable benefits to game developers (tourism centers) and to create additional interest to city explorers.
STEPS FOR THE TOURIST CENTER. The tourist center creates its own Questario account with a personalized URL. The design of the account is easily adapted to their needs. With a few clicks, they add a route, description of the game, tasks, rules, as well as some additional information – stories, facts, visual materials, videos, etc. By collaborating with local partners, they attach rewards with vouchers and discount offers. The tourist center decides whether the game will be available in a paid or free version. The game is launched, published on media and social networks: anyone interested can apply and explore the city through the game at their convenience. By logging into account game administrators monitor the activity of participants, contact them and make adjustments if needed.
THE PLANNED STEPS FOR PLAYERS. Participants apply for the chosen game and, whenever they are ready, they can start the adventure. They are guided to the most interesting corners of the city – courtyards, squares, parks and historical places to check-in there, performing certain tasks and competing with other players to reach the best score and be eligible for winning the prizes.
Outcome
New City Visitors
The introduction of the city hunt game has raised the number of visitors to the cities up to 12 percent with 96% of successfully completed games. Quest games have helped promote local attractions through the players sharing their experiences on social networks, after completing the quest, as well as spreading information from word of mouth.
Awareness of the Cultural Heritage
During the games, 52 important and unusual objects in the local context or scale have been highlighted, bringing various forgotten sites back to life, as well as giving them a special charm and an opportunity for players to take beautiful photos.
Revenue Boost
As a result of the cooperation with local producers and different city offers, most of the game participants visited local entertainment venues and took advantage of the discounts granted as rewards, which has promoted the overall infrastructure of the city and allowed to present the best offers in the area through personal involvement, while ensuring personal engagement in all activities.
Tighten Local Cooperation
Involving a variety of local organizations and entrepreneurs in the game-making process has brought a number of benefits for all, as well as fostered closer cooperation between local service providers helping to drive the region’s growth and popularity as a whole.
