Designing for Experience-Based Tourism: A Virtual Tour in Tehran

Authors: Maryam Khalili, Fateme Ghanei

Abstract:

As one of the most significant phenomena of industrialized societies, tourism plays a key role in encouraging regional developments and enhancing higher standards of living for local communities in particular. Traveling is a formative experience endowed with lessons on various aspects of life. It allows us learning how to enhance the social position as well as the social relationships. However, people forget the need to travel and gain first-hand experiences as they have to cope with the ever-increasing rate of stress created by the disorders and routines of the urban dwelling style. In this paper, various spaces of such experiences were explored through a virtual tour with two underlying aims: 1) encouraging, informing, and educating the community in terms of tourism development, and 2) introducing a temporary release from the routines. This study enjoyed a practical-qualitative research methodology, and the required data were collected through observation and using a multiple-response questionnaire. The participants (19-48 years old) included 41 citizens of both genders (63.4% male and 36.6% female) from two regions in Tehran, selected by cluster-probability sampling. The results led to development of a spatial design for a virtual tour experience in Tehran where different areas are explored to both raise people’s awareness and educate them on their cultural heritage.

Keywords: Ecotourism, education, gamification, social interaction, urban design, virtual tour.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1131117

References:

[1] C. M. Law, “Urban tourism: attracting visitors to large cities,” Mansell Publishing Limited, 1993.
[2] B. Bhandari and O. Abe, “Environmental education: From idea to action in the Asia-Pacific,” International Review for Environmental Strategies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 165-176, 2002.
[3] A. N. Antle, A. Bevans, J. Tanenbaum, K. Seaborn and S. Wang, “Futura: design for collaborative learning and game play on a multi-touch digital tabletop,” roceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction, pp. 93-100, 2011.
[4] E. Cohen, “Toward a Sociology of International Tourism,” Political Economics, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 164-182, 1972.
[5] P. Corrigan, “The Sociology of Consumption: An Introduction,” 1997.
[6] K. Markwell, “An intimate rendezvous with nature’? Mediating the tourist-nature experience at three tourist sites in Borneo,” Tourist Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 39-57, 2001.
[7] R. Luecke, “Managing change and transition,” Harvard Business Press, 2003.
[8] R. Sharpley, “Travel and Tourism,” Sage, 2006.
[9] A. Gough, “The Australian-ness of curriculum jigsaws: Where does environmental education fit?” Journal of Environmental Education, vol. 27, no. 01, pp. 9-23, 2011.
[10] S. De Freitas, G. Rebolledo‐Mendez, F. Liarokapis, G. Magoulas and A. Poulovassilis, “Learning as immersive experiences: Using the four‐dimensional framework for designing and evaluating immersive learning experiences in a virtual world,” British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 69-85, 2010.
[11] A. Jansson, “Spatial phantasmagoria: The mediatization of tourism experience,” European Journal of Communication, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 429-443, 2002.
[12] T. Hall, L. Ciolfi, L. Bannon, M. Fraser, S. Benford, J. Bowers and M. Flintham, “The visitor as virtual archaeologist: explorations in mixed reality technology to enhance educational and social interaction in the museum,” in Proceedings of the 2001 conference on Virtual reality, archeology, and cultural heritage, ACM, 2001, pp. 91-96.
[13] D. Charles, T. Charles, M. McNeill, D. Bustard and M. Black, “Game‐based feedback for educational multi‐user virtual environments,” British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 638-654, 2011.
[14] A. Edalat; “Hypothesis of the Tragedization: The Long Lasting Impact of Mongolos Tragedy on the Political, Social, and Scientific History of Iran”, Bokhara Magazine, No.77,78, 2010, (in Persian language), pp. 227-259.
[15] E. Ostrom; “Governing the Commons; The evolution of institutions for collective action”; Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-3.
[16] P. Jenkins; “How to gamify your marketing with the 6Cs framework” - Webinar Recording; accessible in: https://vimeo.com/130436450, last access: 2016.12.12.
[17] G. Ropohl; “Philosophy of Socio-Technical Systems”, PHIL & TECH 4:3 Spring 1999.
[18] P. Jenkins “How to gamify your marketing using the 6 Cs framework #gamification #ContentStrategy”, Posted on Jul 11, 2015. http://tayloringit.com/2015/07/how-to-gamify-your-marketing-using-the-6-cs-framework gamification-contentstrategy/ access: 2016.12.12.