Gamified mobile experiences: smart

technologies for tourism destinations

Ander Garcia, Maria Teresa Linaza, Aitor Gutierrez and Endika Garcia

Ander Garcia is Senior Abstract

Researcher and Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: to present gamified mobile experiences as valid tools for
Maria Teresa Linaza is DMOs to enrich the experience of tourists, and to present the benefits provided to DMOs by analytics
Director of Institutional tools integrated on gamified mobile experiences.
Development and Design/methodology/approach – Staff from three DMOs have generated a gamified mobile
Promotion, both at experience using a custom authoring tool designed and developed to fulfil their requirements. This
Vicomtech, Donostia, San gamified experience has targeted families with children visiting Basque Country during off-peak season.
The experience has been validated over a period of seven weeks within a pilot project promoted by the
Sebastián, Spain.
local tourist information offices of the DMOs. Data directly provided by tourists and data gathered from
Aitor Gutierrez is based at
analytic tools integrated on the gamified mobile experience have been analysed to fulfil the research
Vicomtech, Donostia, San objectives presented on the paper.
Sebastián, Spain.
Findings – Both DMOs and tourists can benefit from gamified mobile experiences. The integration of
Endika Garcia is analytics tools to gain insights into the behaviour of tourists can be a relevant information source for
Researcher at Batura DMOs.
Mobile Solutions, Bilbao, Research limitations/implications – The pilot project has targeted a niche tourism market, families with
Spain. children visiting Basque Country, and has been running during off-peak season. Further studies focusing
on other tourist types and different tourism season and destination types will be required to strengthen the
validation of the research objectives presented on this paper.
Practical implications – The paper promotes both the development of gamified mobile experiences
and the inclusion of analytics tools for DMOs to obtain relevant information about tourists and the mobile
experiences.
Originality/value – A gamified mobile experience is generated by DMOs, validated on the basis of
experience of real tourists. The analytics tools inside the gamified mobile experience provide DMOs with
relevant information.
Keywords Analytics, Gamification, DMO, Mobile experience
Paper type Research paper
Received 23 August 2017
Revised 27 October 2017
3 January 2018
11 January 2018 1. Introduction
11 February 2018
15 March 2018 The concept of gamification can be defined as “the use of game design elements and
23 March 2018
Accepted 4 April 2018 game thinking in a non-game context” (Deterding et al., 2011). Gamification should be
The authors would like to
distinguished from games, as it only uses some game elements. It has been applied with
thank the Basque Government several objectives, ranging from increasing brand awareness to encouraging consumer
and the Provincial Council of
Bizkaia for partially funding this engagement.
project. The authors would also
like to thank the staff at The tourism industry has already used game elements in all the trip phases (Negrus a et al.,
Basquetour and the tourist 2015), for example, in frequent-flyers programs or pre-trip marketing campaigns for some
offices of Zarautz and Getaria
for their help and participation destinations, such as Ski Jump by Visit Norway (www.visitnorway.com/holmenkollen [23
in the validation, especially August 2017]), the Jet Off experience by Geneva (www.jetofftogeneva.com [23 March
Idurre Ostolaza, who is head of
the Innovation & Sustainability 2016]) or the Serbian Convention Bureau (Kovac
evic et al., 2014). However, as gamification
Unit in Basquetour, Basque
Tourism Agency (Basque
is a relatively recent concept, only a few destination management organizations (DMOs)
Government). have developed gamified experiences for the on-site phase of the trip.

PAGE 30 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019, pp. 30-49, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1660-5373 DOI 10.1108/TR-08-2017-0131
Gamified mobile experiences are a new channel for DMOs to interact with tourists. Not only
do they allow DMOs to influence the behaviour of tourists, they also open new opportunities
a et al.,
to gain insights into their real on-site behaviour. Researchers (Xu et al., 2014; Negrus
2015; Xu et al., 2017) have already highlighted several benefits of gamified experiences,
such as the increase in the duration of visits or the uniform load distribution of tourists
through the destination.
The impact of these experiences can be measured based on analytics tools. Interaction
data traces gathered by the mobile applications have become a new valuable information
source for DMOs. This information can be applied directly, to not only offer better
experiences to tourists but also improve their decision-making process. This information
might be shared with local tourism service providers to improve their knowledge about their
customers.
This new interaction channel and information source might be even more relevant for small-
and medium-sized DMOs, as they usually lack resources to develop these experiences,
measure their impact and access information about the behaviour of tourists on-site.
Given that there is a gap in the research on the analysis of the real impact of gamified
mobile experiences on-site and the information they can provide about the behaviour of
tourists, this paper describes the implementation and validation of gamified mobile
experiences as a smart technology for DMOs to promote their destinations during the on-
site phase of the trip. The experiences have been designed and implemented by three
DMOs using a user-friendly authoring tool which has been validated by real tourists over a
period of seven weeks. Lastly, the data provided by tourists and data automatically
gathered by the mobile experience have been analysed to provide an additional valuable
information source for DMOs.
This paper has been organised as follows. Section 2 reviews the state of the art of
gamification and the application of gamified mobile experiences and analytics tools in the
tourism domain. Section 3 presents the research objectives. Section 4 focuses on a
gamified mobile experience and its validation by real tourists. Lastly, Section 5 summarises
the conclusions and proposes future work.

2. State of the art

2.1 Defining gamification
The term gamification was defined by Deterding et al. (2011) as “the use of game design
elements in non-game contexts”. Thus, gamification is differentiated from related concepts
such as serious games (use of full-fledged games in non-game contexts) or pervasive
games (extension of games to new environments). Gamification aims to change the
behaviour of users for wanted and desirable activities through extrinsic and intrinsic
motivation. The former refers to activities which are only performed to achieve some distinct
outcome in the form of rewards. The latter is defined as the performance of an activity for its
inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence (Ryan and Deci, 2000).
Although this definition has been broadly accepted, several researchers have proposed
further extensions and adaptations for different domains. Interested readers are directed to
the work of Seaborn and Fels (2015), who analyse game mechanics and game design
issues and present a survey about gamification. This survey focuses both on the
clarification of the terminology and concepts associated with gamification and on existing
literature of applied examples of gamification. They find that the effectiveness of
gamification appears to be context-specific and highlights the need for more continued
empirical investigations of gamified practices and its effects.
Five levels of game design elements, which should be considered in gamification, have
been defined (Deterding et al., 2011): design patterns related to the game interface

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 31

 (badges, leaderboards, etc.); patterns and mechanics for game design (time constraints,
turns, etc.); principles and heuristics for game design (clear goals, game styles, etc.); game
models (challenge, curiosity, etc.); and methods to design the game (play testing, play-
centric design, etc.).
Taking into account the potential benefits of gamification for the service industry, such as
tourism, Huotari and Hamari (2012) have redefined gamification as the “process of
enhancing a service with affordances for gameful experiences in order to support users’
overall value creation”. As Xu et al. (2014) outline, there are several examples of the
application of game design elements in tourism, but they might not have been recognised
or named as gamification. Gaming provides tourism organizations and destination
marketers with an opportunity to create informative and entertaining settings for successful
brand awareness, interaction and communication (Xu et al., 2016).
Analysing the use of full-fledged games in tourism, Xu et al. (2013) identify some insights
into the motivation of tourists and DMOs, which could also be applied to gamified tourism
experiences. The games to be played on-site should be simple, relaxed and not very
challenging and should provide useful information about the destination as well as allow
interaction with other people.
Xu et al. (2017) presented a systematic review of the concept of gamification, including the
analysis of motivational gaming elements and the application of gamification in tourism.
They conclude that academic research on the application of gamification is still at an early
stage and propose several research directions, such as the design process of gamification
in tourism along with case studies and empirical research on the effectiveness of
gamification. This paper will target this final direction on the real application of gamification
within the tourism domain by DMOs for the on-site phase of the trip.

2.2 Gamification applied to destination management organizations

Focusing on the use of gamification in tourism, Xu et al. (2014) and Xu et al. (2017)
conceptually identify the main potential benefits which could be useful for DMOs, such as
encouraging tourist engagement, enhancing tourist experiences, improving tourist loyalty
and increasing tourism brand awareness. After a theoretical analysis, Negrus a et al. (2015)
also present several potential benefits of gamification for not only DMOs but also other
stakeholders (tourists, tourism employees and local community). These potential benefits
could improve the economic, social and environmental sustainability of destinations.
Xu et al. (2016) target what drives tourists to play mobile games, and what their
requirements are. They analyse the differences between games in a general domain and
tourism games. They divide tourism games in two groups: social games, played before
arriving at the destination, and location-based mobile games, played while at the
destination. They find that curiosity and exploration are the main motivations for tourists,
together with socializing, having fun and fantasy experiences and fulfilling challenges and
achievements. Only when the motivation of the tourist player and the informational and
experiential motivations supported by tourism marketers is fully understood by game
designers, can a game become attractive and desirable to tourist players.
Kiráľová (2015) presents a study based on the analysis of face-to-face semi-structured
interviews about gamification with thirty tourism stakeholders holding marketing roles in the
Czech Republic. She concludes that the use of tourism gamification by DMOs is still in its
infancy, identifying the cost of gamification projects and the difficulties in measuring their
results as two of their main limitations when planning gamified initiatives.
Despite the potential benefits, the level of adoption of gamification among DMOs is very
limited (Buhalis and Wagner, 2013). After analysing 44 European destinations, Buhalis et al.

PAGE 32 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

conclude that only seven DMOs have mobile applications that integrate gamification
techniques.
Recently, Sigala (2015a) reviewed gamification examples aiming to influence before, during
and after the purchase/consumption of the tourism experience. Focusing on the on-site
phase of the trip, the main aim is to motivate the customers (tourists) to increase the level of
their consumption and the use of the firm (destination) products, while also generating
enjoyable and memorable experiences (Sigala, 2015a).
The first examples were mainly related to gamified location-based marketing applications
such as Foursquare (Cramer et al., 2011). Some real examples include gamified travel tours
for urban and rural environments and initiatives such as the Stockholm Sound project
promoted by the Visitors Board (http://thinkdigital.travel [23 August 2017]). This project
consists of an innovative travel guide for mobile phones combining music with gamification,
geolocation and augmented reality elements. A successful example that has evolved over
time is the mobile application Epic Mix (Nunes and Mayer, 2014), launched by Vail Resorts
in 2010 (USA), and developed to enhance the experience of skiers and snowboarders. It
provides interactive maps, integrates social media and offers badges to tourists as they
explore the ski slopes.
The city of Pafos has also created a gamified destination application (Pafos Treasure Hunt)
to inform and motivate visitors to explore and learn about the destination. The application
has enabled destinations to attract more visitors, and to persuade visitors to spend more
time and money at places, while providing relevant data on tourists (preferences, feedback,
visitation paths, spending behaviours) (Sigala, 2015a).
The “Discover Hong Kong City Walks” mobile application, promoted by the city’s tourism
board, offers tourists the most interesting walking tours in the city, each one consisting of
several PoIs. Whenever tourists complete at least half of a walk, tourists receive a “stamp” of
a tour. This mobile application has been available since 2011 on Android and iOS devices,
accounting for between 50,000 and 100,000 downloads from Google Play (no data on iOS
downloads available) (Stadler and Bilgram, 2016).
Yılmaz and Coskun (2016) explore the use of gamification as a tool for marketing
communication in tourism. They conclude that the amount of examples of gamified
experiences in the tourism industry will grow with the help of digital technology
developments.
Although there are studies about the benefits of gamification in different domains (Hamari
et al., 2014), and despite the potential benefits of gamification in tourism, there is still a
research gap regarding its real impact (Sigala, 2015b).
Recently, Nunes and Mayer (2014) analysed the acceptance of a gamified mobile
experience in a Brazilian nature area. They identify the potential of such experiences to
enhance the visiting experience. Lim et al. (2015) present a gamified application for walkers
and hikers to generate benefits for local communities of rural tourism areas. They validate its
benefits both for tourists, who become aware of local resources, and for local suppliers,
who gain a new advertisement channel.
Although previous examples show the potential benefits of gamification for the on-site
phase of the trip, more research and best practices are required to better analyse its impact
for DMOs. To have more experiences to validate this impact, DMOs require more tools to
generate them, such as the one presented in this paper.
Existing examples of authoring tools to generate gamified mobile experiences by DMOs are
not specifically targeting gamification requirements of DMOs (Garcia et al., 2016). They
include functionalities that are useless in generating gamified mobile tourism experiences,
ignore gamification elements, do not include tourism information or do not gather

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 33

 information on tourists. The authoring tool included in this paper has been customised to
fulfil the requirements of DMOs by tackling with these issues.
This authoring tool has been described by Garcia et al. (2016), who validate that gamified
mobile experiences can be implemented with user-friendly tools by DMOs to promote their
destinations.
They also confirm the theoretical value of these experiences for DMOs:
䊏 DMOs recognise the capacity of the experiences to influence the behaviour of tourists
on-site. The main changes identified in the behaviour are in line with those presented by
previous researchers (Xu et al., 2014; Negrus a et al., 2015): increased duration of visits
to PoIs and balanced distribution of tourists over the destination.
䊏 DMOs find the experiences could improve the brand image of the destination,
increasing the tourists’ knowledge about it (history, culture, etc.) and offer a better
service to niche tourism markets (family tourism, active tourism, etc.).
䊏 DMOs also require examples of tools measuring the impact of these experiences and
obtaining information on the behaviour of tourists, such as the analytics tool presented
in the next section.

2.3 Analytics applied by destination management organizations

The majority of tourism information processes and transactions are processed electronically
with tourists leaving electronic traces of their travel-related activities (searches, trip
planning, reservations, feedback, etc.), but DMOs make a limited use of these data
(Höpken et al., 2011).
Recently, researchers have proposed several systems to transform these data traces into
valuable information for DMOs. For example, Fuchs et al. (2014), present a Big Data
analytics framework validated in Sweden for knowledge generation in DMOs. This
framework focuses on all information services provided by DMOs, and gamified mobile
experiences could be considered as one small data source within their approach. This
framework serves as an example of the potential relevance of analytics for DMOs.
Most DMOs, and especially small- and medium-sized ones, do not have access to the
resources required to develop and integrate Big Data into their daily processes, although
they could still use existing analytics tools to obtain relevant information about the impact of
gamified mobile experiences and the behaviour of tourists.
Clark et al. (2014) analyse the general advantages of Google Analytics (GA) to replace log
analysis systems as tools to obtain information about users. GA is the most popular
analytics tool, although similar products such as the Open Source Piwik offer an equivalent
functionality. Among the information provided by GA, Clark et al. identify five key
performance indicators (KPIs) for marketers: unique visitors, core users, bouncers, mobile
users and demographic (user) information.
Plaza (2009) and Plaza (2011) propose similar KPIs from GA to analyse the quality of the
traffic of a website. These KPIs (visits, pages per visit, length of visit, bounce rate and return
rate) are applied by Moral et al. (2014) in the analysis of the visibility and performance of a
website for a regional association of tourism SMEs that advertises on Google. They measure
these KPIs to test the effectiveness of online marketing using the data provided by GA.
Conley and Donaldson (2015) focus on the process to be followed to measure the benefits
of gamification from the beginning of each project, analytics being a key element when
deploying gamification initiatives. They propose this process to tackle the following points:
goal (business objective, KPIs, key actions and challenges), relevant categorizations (for
data parsing/segmentation), benchmarks, data sources and reporting recommendations.

PAGE 34 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

Focusing on examples of the application of analytics tools related to gamification, Kuo and
Chuang (2016) measure the effect of a gamification initiative. They analyse both surveys
and GA to measure its impact for online academic disseminations, based on the behaviour
of users when accessing the platform.
Wolff et al. (2014) present a mobile storytelling experience based on scanning QR codes at
museums that could resemble a tourism application. For its validation, they rely on analytics
about page access to identify how often visitors scanned QR codes and to what extent they
were likely to follow the story once they had visited the online information about an artwork.
Regarding “pure” gamified tourism experiences, Yılmaz and Cos kun (2016) remark that the
implementation of gamification will contribute immensely to tourism businesses, as
gamification experiences will provide data on consumer behaviour regarding tourism goods
and services selection, especially when supplemented by data collected through mobile
technologies and smartphones. Analytics are key tools when converting these data into
valuable information for DMOs.
Previous examples show that analytics tools, such as GA, are powerful and cost-effective tools
that could be applied by DMOs to validate gamified experiences. KPIs such as bounce rates
from traditional websites provide little value for gamified mobile experiences. For these type of
experiences, other variables such as the number of visits, pages per visit, length of visits or
information about visitors become valuable data sources for DMOs. The integration of custom
views and events on these analytics tools, as described in Section 4, increases their utility
when validating gamification initiatives and obtaining data about the behaviour of tourists.

3. Research objectives
Although on-site gamified experiences may include several potential benefits for DMOs,
there are only few examples that have measured their real impact. To address this research
gap, this paper focuses on the validation of the following research objectives:
RO1. Gamified mobile experiences are valuable tools for DMOs and tourists for the on-
site phase of the trip.
This objective will analyse the fulfilment of the theoretical benefits presented by Garcia et al.
(2016) in a real scenario. These theoretical benefits presented by Garcia et al. (2016) are: to
increase visit duration at PoIs (points of interest), balance the distribution of tourists over the
destination, improve the brand image of the destination, increase tourist knowledge of the
destination and offer a better service to niche tourism markets.
DMOs may be able to provide enhanced information to tourists so they can discover the
destination more deeply. Furthermore, gamified mobile experiences should also allow
DMOs influence the behaviour of tourists at the destination, such as the choice of PoIs to
visit or the time spent at them, to improve their image of the destination.
Gamified mobile experiences may also enrich the visiting experience of tourists, as their
discovery of the destination will be a more enjoyable experience:
RO2. Analytics from gamified mobile experiences provide relevant information for DMOs.
The integration of analytics tools with gamified mobile experiences could provide DMOs with
relevant information not only about the impact of the experiences but also about the behaviour
of tourists while at the destination in a cost-effective way. Such information can offer DMOs
and local service providers new insights about tourists, their behaviour and the destination.

4. Gamified mobile experience

A pilot project called Jokotur has been designed, implemented and evaluated to analyse
the impact of the real application of gamified mobile experiences during the on-site phase

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 35

 of a trip both for tourists visiting the Basque Country, and for the destinations and the local
tourism service providers. Two local DMOs (Zarautz, Getaria) and the Regional Tourist
Organization (RTO) of the Basque Country (Basquetour, Basque Tourism Agency), have
been directly involved in the validation of the mobile experience.
The pilot has been divided into four phases following the process proposed by Bedwell
et al. (2015): definition of the experience, development of the technical prototype, validation
of the pilot and analysis of the results.

4.1 Definition of the experience

The main features of the mobile experience have been defined in this phase. First, DMOs
have selected families with children visiting Basque Country during the off-peak season as
the target user profile for the validation. This tourist segment has been identified as a market
of interest for the DMOs. Families are supposed to be receptive to these types of gamified
experiences where all of their members can participate. It is expected that the difficulty of
the mini-games and technological knowledge requirements should not be a barrier.
Regarding the languages, the experience should be available in four languages (Basque,
Spanish, French and English), which correspond to the main tourism markets of the Urola
Kosta region, where the municipalities of Zarautz and Getaria are located.
After establishing the main features and requirements, DMOs have defined the general
workflow of the experience. The experience proposes four PoIs from each municipality
(eight PoIs in total), where six of them have associated questions and the remaining two QR
codes. DMOs have also defined the content (texts and images) and the corresponding
mini-games (questions or check-ins) for each PoI. While questions are multiple choice
questions, check-ins require scanning a QR code located at a visible position at the PoI.
Tourists can gain one point per PoI when correctly answering the questions or properly
performing the check-ins. Once three out of eight points have been successfully collected,
an evaluation survey is presented to tourists to assess the attractiveness and easiness of
the gamified mobile experience and to send any further suggestions. Finally, tourists obtain
a code to redeem it for a real prize at the tourism information offices after completing the
survey.

4.2 Development of the technical prototype

The second phase develops the technical prototype, which has two main components: the
authoring tool for DMO staff to generate gamified mobile experiences and the generated
mobile experiences.
4.2.1 Architecture of the system. Figure 1 shows the architecture of the system, including
the main modules clustered according to their functionality: generation, publication and
management. First, experiences are generated using the authoring tool, which is a Single
Page Web Application based on HTML5, Backbone and Bootstrap. The server is
composed of REST services implemented in PHP on the basis of a MySQL relational
database. The authoring tool stores all the information related to the experience in the
server.
Secondly, during the publication process, self-contained experiences are generated with
their definition (PoIs, mini-games, etc.) included in a JSON file loaded with the information
generated by the authoring tool. For each language of the experience, a JSON file is also
generated with the language dependent values. The multimedia files are also bundled with
the rest of the experience during this process. All these files are combined with generic
archetypes of hybrid mobile applications, then the final result can be downloaded and
transformed into a mobile native application to be manually uploaded to App stores.

PAGE 36 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

 Figure 1 System architecture

The archetypes of the mobile experiences are based on the Ionic Framework and they are
converted to native applications using Apache Cordova. Certain secondary actions of the
mobile experiences (surveys, suggestions and codes for collecting prizes) connect to the
server to load and save data.
Finally, the management process allows DMOs to access the Google Analytics dashboard
to analyse the information generated automatically from the interaction of tourists to access
an additional data source to support their decisions.
4.2.2 Authoring tool. The authoring tool is based on the authoring tool described by Garcia
et al. (2016). The main requirement of the authoring tool is to allow DMOs to autonomously
generate gamified mobile experiences, independent from a technology provider. The tool
must be easy to use and minimise the efforts required to perform this task. Gamified mobile
experiences must also fulfil some functional requirements. First, the mobile experiences
must be available offline, so that their main functionalities should work without an internet
connection. Second, the experiences must be multilingual to be available in the more
relevant languages for each DMO. Third, they must be connected to social media. Finally,
the experiences must integrate surveys for DMOs to gain knowledge about tourists and
include practical and contact information about the destinations.
Garcia et al. (2016) validate the capacity of DMOs to autonomously generate simplified
gamified experiences of differing complexity using this tool. To simplify the generation
process, the authoring tool can be easily adapted to fit the special characteristics and
complexity of each type of gamified experience. In this paper DMOs generate a gamified
mobile experience ready to be publicly launched and validated by real tourists.
The flow of this authoring tool has been personalised for the Jokotur pilot. The final workflow
of the authoring process has been divided into the following eight steps (Figure 2). Step 1
(load) allows DMOs to not only generate new experiences, but also load, preview and copy
existing ones. In Step 2 (start), the type of experience (pilot gamified mobile experience), its
name and the desired mobile output platforms (iOS, Android, etc.) are selected. Step 3
(design) is related to the customization of the visual appearance of the graphical interface

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 37

 Figure 2 Authoring tool workflow

of the mobile experiences, including primary and secondary colours (Figure 3a). The main
content of the experience is defined in Step 4 (define), which includes the definition of the
PoIs (Figures 3b and c), mini-games attached to PoIs and rewards obtained by tourists
during the experience.
Within Step 5 (inform), the DMO can introduce additional information to be shown to tourists
or gathered from them. The former includes information about the gamified experience
(collaborating DMOs and entities and a brief description of the experience), weather
forecast, information about the DMO (description, contact information, social media, etc.)
and a tutorial about the mobile application. Regarding the latter, a survey has been defined
(Figure 3e) including two questions (“Is Jokotur user friendly?” and “Has Jokotur enriched
your experience in Euskadi?”) and a free text field to make suggestions.
Once all the content has been inserted, Step 6 (translate) is related to the translation of the
experience (Figure 3f). The information is primarily generated in Spanish and a CSV file with
the same content in Basque, English and French is also uploaded.
The final two steps are related to the publication of the mobile experience. Step 7 (publish)
defines the information to be shown on the App stores where the mobile experience is going
to be published, such as a description, category or an image (Figure 3d). Although the
mobile experience is automatically generated within Step 8 (finish), it should be manually
deployed at the App stores the first time an experience is published. Each time an
application is launched by a tourist, it automatically checks whether contents of the
experience have been updated, so that when a new version of an experience is generated,
the previously installed mobile applications automatically update their contents.
The DMOs have generated the Jokotur experience with the support of a technology
provider to successfully upload it to the mobile app stores and to update its contents
autonomously. This further validates the hypothesis presented by Garcia et al. (2016), as
DMOs have been able to generate a market-ready gamified mobile experience. The
authoring tool greatly decreases the technological gap for DMO staff, promoting the
development of new gamification initiatives for the on-site phase of the trip.
4.2.3 Gamified mobile experience. The mobile application automatically loads the
information provided by DMOs from the JSON files to generate the final experience, which
starts with the selection of the language (Figure 4a) and a short tutorial (Figure 4b). A list of
the eight PoIs is then displayed (Figure 4c), in which each PoI has an icon (an eye) that
represents whether it has been already visited. When a PoI is selected, its details are
displayed (Figure 4e) and the corresponding mini-game is activated (Figure 4f). Tourists are
informed if they have successfully fulfilled it and the remaining points to win a prize. Once

PAGE 38 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

 Figure 3 Screenshots of the authoring tool

they reach this minimum amount of points (three) (Figure 4h), a brief survey about the
experience is visualized (Figure 4i), including the code that can be redeemed at the tourism
office.
Tourists can also select PoIs from a map view (Figure 4d), which shows their current
position. Finally, the main menu (Figure 4g) allows the user to change the language, repeat
the tutorial again, check the weather forecast, access information about the application and
the pilot and contacting the DMOs (Figure 4j).
The mobile application traces the actions of tourists using GA. The default tracking
provided by GA has been extended with customized views and events, which have been
defined for each screen of the mobile application (PoI, language, tutorial, weather, etc.).
Four types of event categories have been defined for tracking: game, language, survey and
contact. The game category tracks the following actions: check-in to discover successful
and unsuccessful check-in attempts, start viewing the last screen of the tutorial, correct and
incorrect answers to PoI questions, new point gained by tourists; minimum amount of points

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 39

 Figure 4 Screenshots of the gamified mobile experience

reached by tourists to win a prize and end of the experience, when submitting the survey
after reaching the minimum amount of points. Second, the language category tracks the
selection of the language (Basque, Spanish, English and French) to identify the most
commonly used languages. Finally, survey and contact categories are only tracked when
tourists perform these actions.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the tracking of the location of the tourists based
on GPS data has been discarded by DMOs, although it would have been technically
feasible. This decision has been taken due to privacy concerns and negative
impacts on the duration of the battery. Thus, the mobile application only checks
locally whether a tourist is indeed close to a PoI, but the location of the tourist is not
stored.

4.3 Validation of the Jokotur pilot

The validation of the Jokotur pilot took place from mid-October to the end of November
2015. Owing to its pilot nature, Jokotur was promoted by a focused marketing campaign
which started with a press conference where the three DMOs and the technology provider
presented the initiative. The press conference was complemented with entries at the Web
and the Facebook pages of the DMOs. Jokotur was only promoted at the Zarautz and
Getaria tourism offices.
Besides the brand image of the pilot, leaflets and a poster (Figure 5) were printed to
describe the initiative and direct tourists through an NFC tag and a QR code to the App
download pages on Android Google Play and iOS App Store. The staff introduced the
initiative to families visiting the tourism offices. To promote the consumption of local
services, the leaflet (Figure 6) also includes four coupons offering one euro discounts at four
private businesses collaborating with the pilot.

PAGE 40 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

 Figure 5 Promotion poster of Jokotur

Figure 6 Promotion leaflet of Jokotur

Finally, paint sets, paint books, cups, buffs and bags (Figure 7) have been available at
tourism offices as prizes for tourists gaining at least three points.

4.3.1 Data collected by DMOs. Staff at the tourism offices were in charge of the promotion
of the pilot and the interaction with tourists. Owing to their workload, they did not perform
additional tasks such as interviews or focus groups. Furthermore, local service providers
taking part in the validation were not interviewed.
Although this has limited the amount of data provided by DMOs, it is a common situation for
small- and medium-sized DMOs and tourism service providers. They do not have enough
resources to further involve their staff in the measurement of the impact of these types of
initiatives.
Regarding the acceptance of the application, 70 per cent of the families visiting the tourism
offices downloaded the mobile experience. Further, 90 per cent of downloads were made
through the QR code located on the posters at the offices; 22 per cent of downloads came
from iOS devices; and 78 per cent from Android devices.
Tourists considered that Jokotur was easy to use (average of 2.85 out of 3 responding to the
question “Is Jokotur user-friendly?”) and that it had improved their visiting experience
(average of 2.7 out of 3 responding to the question “Has Jokotur enriched your experience
in Euskadi?”).

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 41

 Figure 7 Example of the prizes

These results partially validate RO1, so that it can be assumed that gamified mobile
experiences enrich the visiting experience of tourists. Jokotur has been validated by only a
target group of tourists, so further research is required to extend conclusions to other target
groups.
Although the questions responded by tourists could have an ambiguous interpretation,
these results align with three of the benefits of these experiences detected by DMOs:
improve the brand image of the destination, increase tourists’ knowledge about the
destination and offer a better service to niche tourism markets.
There are no data on the impact of Jokotur regarding the higher number of visits to selected
PoIs or the distribution of tourists in the destination as local service providers have not been
able to check which of the visitors came as a result of the gamified application. The DMO
Basquetour undertook to reimburse the discount coupons and some tourists have
confirmed they did make use of them, although none of the service providers has put in a
claim for a reimbursement.
The small amount of information collected by DMOs demonstrates the relevance of the
integration of automatic measuring tools, such as GA, in the gamified experiences. These
analytics tools neither increase the burden on DMO staff or local service providers nor
depend on them. Their integration costs during the development stage of the mobile
experiences are insignificant, and they provide a user-friendly interface for DMOs.
4.3.2 Data collected from google analytics. The analysis of the data tracked and
consolidated by GA provides a deeper insight about the results of the validation and the
behaviour of tourists. Although the figures may not be completely accurate, as is the case of
the analytics of Web pages, they offer a solid insight into the gamified mobile experience.
During the pilot, 124 tourists used the application, generating 210 sessions and visualizing
2,315 screens of the mobile experience. The average session duration was 6 min and 5 s
(Figure 8). The maximum number of active users within a day was 39. After this peak, the
average number of users during weekends reached an average value between 10 and 15
in October and early November, and it declined to 2-3 users by the end of the validation
period. The results clearly reflect the effect of the initial marketing campaign and the regular
tourist distribution for these DMOs during the off-peak season.
With respect to the demographic information, 82 per cent of the tourists had a mobile
phone configured in Spanish, 12 per cent of them in English, 4 per cent in Catalan and

PAGE 42 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

 Figure 8 Screenshot of a general overview from GA

2 per cent in Basque. These data are calculated by GA mainly based on the IP address
assigned to mobile devices by communication services providers. For example, nearly
half of the sessions originated in Bilbao, the main internet connection point in the area.
With regard to the provider, the only relevant data that could be outlined are that the
local service provider Euskaltel was responsible for one-third of the sessions.
Therefore, it can be concluded that at least these sessions were related to tourists
coming from the Basque Country.
The analysis of the mobile devices detected that 75.71 per cent of the sessions came from
Android devices and the remaining from iOS devices. Samsung devices accounted for
34.76 per cent of the sessions, Apple for 24.29 per cent and the rest of the manufacturers
(BQ, Google, Sony, LG, Xiaomi, Acer, etc.) with a share of less than 8 per cent each.
Analysis of screen sizes showed that the most common screen resolution was 480  800
(18.57 per cent of the sessions), while small screens (320  480 or less) were used only in
less than 5 per cent of the sessions, and less than 10 per cent of tourists had a resolution
smaller than 640  480. These results emphasize the need of including images with an
approximate resolution of 1,080  1,920 to offer an appealing visualization experience
across all devices.
Although the average viewing time was 36 s/screen, tourists spent an average of 1 min and
33 s on the survey; 57 s on the PoI screen and 53 s on the map screen. The contact page
was the least used page of the application with an average stay of just 4 s; 28 per cent of
tourists ended their visit on the about screen, while 20.83 per cent exited the experience on
the survey screen.
Turning to language selection, of the 115 related events, 78.26 per cent changed the
language to Spanish, 15.65 per cent to Basque, 4.35 per cent to English (seven people)
and 1.74 per cent to French (two people).
In terms of visited content, the most accessed screen was the home page with 1129 views,
followed by details about PoIs (616 views), the tutorial (191 views), language (163 views),

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 43

 maps (134 views), weather (40 views), about (25 views), survey (24 views) and contact (20
views).
Tourists launched 883 events, where 85.16 per cent of them were related to the game
category, 13.14 per cent to the language category, 1.59 per cent to the survey category
and just 0.11 per cent to the contact category. Regarding the game category, around 40
per cent of the events (320) were check-ins (196 correct and 124 failed), 12.9 per cent start
of the game after completing the tutorial, 11.57 per cent incorrect answers, 9.84 per cent
correct answers, 8.64 per cent new points, 7.58 per cent prizes won and 3.46 per cent end
of experience (survey submitted).
The collected data related to these events show a high rate of failed check-ins and incorrect
answers. Interviews with tourists would be required to know the reason for this high rate.
One plausible reason could be the nature of the questions. Most of them ask details not
included on the description of the PoI provided by the application. These questions require
tourists to be at the site to select the correct answer. For example, there was a question
about a phrase that can be read on the window of a PoI (Axi Muniain, a surf school), and
another one about the colours of the ropes around the walkway of a PoI (Biotopo Iñurritza).
Tourists were able to retry questions until they got the correct answer, however, once the
correct answer was selected, the application locally cross-checked the GPS position of
tourists to perform the check-in. If tourists were not close to the PoI, and the check-in was
marked as failed. This issue should be considered and validated by future initiatives to
optimize the engagement with tourists.
Regarding the events related to PoIs and mini-games, the internal identifiers of the PoIs
have been saved as values of the events. However, these values are not available for
analysis owing to the consolidation process performed by GA, as it treats the values of
events as numbers, and only shows the average value and the sum of all the values of each
event type. Thus, the details about the identifiers associated with these types of events are
not accessible for the technical prototype. This could be solved in a future version, either by
making an extended use of GA or changing the analytics provider to products such as
Piwik in which every detail of each trace is available rather than consolidated data.
Within the event marking the submission of the survey, the PoIs visited by the tourist have
been saved as labels of the event. Thus, it is possible to analyse the behaviour of tourists
who have submitted the survey. Only one out of 14 tourists visited PoIs in both Zarautz and
Getaria, although the two villages are only 7 km apart and are easily reached by car or
public transportation.
Further research would be required to analyse this pattern. According to DMOs, it was
probably families submitting the survey who also visited the other village. The reason for not
using the mobile experience could be related to an engagement problem. Enhancements of
the application may include the generation of more appealing content, for example, a story
linking the destinations and the PoIs. Another enhancement could be to increase the
minimum amount of points required to win a prize to five, so visiting both villages may be
compulsory to win. Finally, the integration of new game elements could also improve the
engagement level.
These data about PoIs only include tourists who have completed the survey and who could
have continued using the experience but did not participate in more mini-games. It does
give an initial insight into the interest of each PoI. In Getaria, the most visited PoIs were San
Anton Mountain and the sculpture of Juan Sebastián Elcano, while the most visited ones in
Zarautz were the Euskalduna restaurant and the local market. These PoIs are among the
most popular ones at each village and are within walking distance of each other.
The data presented partially validate RO1, but further analysis is required to determine the
correlation between the Jokotur experience and the expected theoretical benefits for

PAGE 44 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

DMOs. Two of the theoretical benefits of these experiences for DMOs (increased duration of
visits to PoIs and to balance the distribution of tourists over the destination) could only be
partially validated. More data would be required to assure with confidence the effect of the
gamified experience over these benefits.
These additional data could be gathered by future experiences from different sources. First,
the integration of analytic tools in these experiences should be designed to include more
details about the action of the tourists (entering and leaving a PoI, arriving at a village [. . .]).
Second, should DMOs allow real-time tracking of the position of tourists while at the
destination, these data could also be obtained by analysing their positions.
Lastly, the analysis of the information obtained from GA validates RO2: analytics tools
provide relevant information from gamified mobile experiences for DMOs. Besides general
information (number of users, devices, origin of connection, etc.), the integration of custom
views and events provides further insights into the on-site behaviour of tourists. The
integration of analytics tools in mobile applications is a cost-effective opportunity for DMOs
to better measure the impact of these applications and improve their knowledge about
tourists.

4.4 Analysis of the results

DMOs have obtained some interesting conclusions analysing the results of the validation. At
the beginning of the validation process, several KPIs have been defined by the DMOs to
measure the impact of the experience (Table I). Although the sample has been lower than
expected, the feedback from the survey has been positive. Tourists have evaluated Jokotur
as a user-friendly application which has enriched their visiting experience. Therefore, DMOs
are encouraged to integrate gamified mobile experiences into their promotion workflow.
These KPIs also show an engagement problem with the experience: less than 20 per cent of
the tourists have managed to obtain 3 points and win a prize and the average number of
PoIs visited by tourists is below 3.
As DMOs generally do not have enough resources to offer bigger prizes that could improve
user engagement they should work on more appealing content and storytelling. The content
could be based on an appealing story linking the destinations and the PoIs. Another
possibility would be to integrate new game elements into the experience.
Considering local service providers have not been able to gather data for validation
purposes, it has not been possible to measure the increase in number of visits to the PoIs as
a result of the gamified mobile experience.
DMOs have evaluated the experience positively and are planning to proceed with a further
validation during the peak season to acquire input from a higher number of tourists. They
need to analyse the results of this new validation before proposing the adoption of gamified
mobile experiences to other DMOs in the Basque Country.

Table I Main KPIs of the experience

KPI Value

Feedback of tourists 2.7/3

Number of tourists downloading Jokotur 124
Overall number of PoIs visited 320
Number of PoIs visited per tourist 2.58/8
Number of tourists reaching 3 points 22 (17.74%)
Increase in number of visits of PoIs NA

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 45

 The pilot has also reinforced the role of analytics tools as new information sources on the
impact of the tourism initiatives and the behaviour of tourists while on-site. In future
validations, the definition of the KPIs should be tackled at the beginning of the process.
KPIs should rely on information provided by the analytics tools, which could be
complemented by and improved on with data from other sources (DMO staff, local service
providers, etc.).
The difficulties faced while collecting data either from DMO staff or the local service
providers increase the relevancy of analytics tools. These tools have been perceived by
DMOs as the only affordable way to measure the real impact of gamified mobile
experiences and to gain insights into the behaviour of tourists.
Data collected in this pilot were partially limited, as it was not properly based on the events
value field on GA. This highlights the importance of validating not only the functionality of the
mobile application but also the accuracy of data collected from the analytics tools
integrated into the application before deploying it.
Analytics tools are key tools in measuring smart tourism initiatives and providing DMOs with
new sources of valuable information on tourists visiting their destinations. These should be
considered from the beginning of the design processes of these initiatives. An improved
design of the collected data should be fully aligned with the KPIs. It should also be directed
to extract advanced information from the results, for example, by applying clustering or
multi-dimensional analysis algorithms.

5. Conclusions
Gamification, defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, has been
successfully applied to several domains to change user behaviour. However, as there are
few examples of gamified mobile experiences implemented by DMOs for the on-site phase
of the trip, to overcome this gap, this paper has presented the design, implementation and
validation of the Jokotur gamified mobile experience by three DMOs in Basque Country for
a period of seven weeks.
The validation is based on the data provided by the DMOs and an analytics tool (GA)
integrated into the mobile application. The validation has assessed and highlighted the
benefits of these types of experiences to enrich the experiences of visiting tourists and
provide a better service to target groups.
The integration of analytics tools such as GA in these types of experiences has proved to be
a cost-effective way of measuring their impact and accessing information about the
behaviour of tourists. DMOs should include these analytics tools in their technological
mobile developments. These tools are a relevant source of information that should be
exploited by DMOs, especially by small- and medium-sized ones, to define and measure
the KPIs of the experiences.
The validation has also faced some issues that should be considered by DMOs, mainly
related to engagement issues.
The discovery and downloading of the experiences should be prioritized, as tourists may be
reluctant to download new applications onto their device. The gamified experiences have to
compete with other mobile applications, such as social media, that may already have the
attention of tourists. DMOs must be aware of the real risk of only very few tourists being
aware of and making use of these experiences. To mitigate this risk, the development of
gamified mobile experiences should be accompanied by marketing efforts to make them
appealing to tourists. Otherwise, few tourists will discover and install these applications.
Secondly, these experiences must be attractive for tourists. Few tourists will finish these
experiences if they only include descriptive content that is already present on the Web and

PAGE 46 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

do not add some value to the visiting experience. Ideally, the content should tell a story
about the destination, so DMOs should allocate enough resources for the design and
production of appealing content. The inclusion of additional game elements to increase this
engagement should also be analysed.
The application of gamification and analytics tools by DMOs for the on-site phase of the trip
is still at an early stage of development; nevertheless, the results of the validation show that
there are opportunities to increase the availability of gamified mobile tourism experiences
and measure them using analytics tools to obtain information about tourist behaviour.
Researchers and industry players are encouraged to further work on gamified mobile
experiences providing new services to tourists, and on analytics tools and KPIs that
improve the measurement of the impact of these experiences and obtain information from
them.
This paper has highlighted several aspects to consider before developing and
measuring the impact of a successful gamified mobile experience. First, contents should
engage tourists, such as storytelling or new game elements. Second, marketing efforts
are required to make tourists aware of the experiences and to download them. Finally, the
design of KPIs to measure the impact of the experience, and the integration of analytics
tools to obtain data required to calculate the KPIs, should be considered from the
beginning of the design processes of these initiatives.
Future work should focused on a further validation on a greater scale of a new version of the
gamified mobile experience.
This new version of the experience should improve the integration of custom views and
events tracked by the analytics system. This is required to more accurately measure the
impact of the experience on tourist behaviour. KPIs should be redesigned and aligned with
the information obtained from the analytics tools to improve the measurement of the new
experience. The content of the experience should also be redesigned to improve the
engagement of tourists. The integration of new game design elements (badges, levels, etc.)
should also be considered. The integration of the functionalities of GA for the approximate
segmentation of tourists based on age (18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65), gender
and interests (technophiles, sports fans, cooking enthusiasts, etc.) that could be relevant for
DMOs should be analysed and validated.
New functionalities that provide an added value to DMOs, such as the integration of
location-based advertisement (LBA) (Lin et al., 2013) as a new channel to better promote
the local tourism industry or provide DMOs with new income sources, should also be
analysed.

References
Bedwell, B., Slack, P. and Greenhalgh, C. (2015), “Learning from the experts: enabling and studying DIY
development of location-based visitor experiences”, 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on
Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, ACM, Osaka, Japan, pp. 755-766.
Buhalis, D. and Wagner, R. (2013), “E-destinations: global best practice in tourism technologies and
applications”, in Cantoni, L. and Xiang, Z. (Eds), Information and Communication Technologies in
Tourism 2013, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 119-130.
Clark, D., Nicholas, D. and Jamali, H.R. (2014), “Evaluating information seeking and use in the changing
virtual world: the emerging role of google analytics”, Learned Publishing, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 185-194.
Conley, K. and Donaldson, C. (2015), “Gamification: the measurement of benefits”, in Reiners, T.
and Wood, L. (Eds), Gamification in Education and Business, Springer, Cham, pp. 673-688.

Cramer, H., Ahmet, Z., Rost, M. and Holmquist, L.E. (2011), “Gamification and location-sharing: some
emerging social conflicts”, CHI Workshop on Gamification, ACM, Vancouver, BC, pp. 30-33.

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 47

 Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R. and Nacke, L. (2011), “From game design elements to gamefulness:
defining ‘gamification”, 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media
Environments - MindTrek 2011, ACM, New York, NY, (pp. 9-15),
Fuchs, M., Höpken, W. and Lexhagen, M. (2014), “Big data analytics for knowledge generation in tourism
destinations – a case from Sweden”, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Elsevier, Vol. 3
No. 4, pp. 198-209.

Garcia, A., Linaza, M.T., Gutierrez, A., Garcia, E. and Ornes, I. (2016), “Generation of gamified mobile
experiences by DMOs”, in Inversini, A. and Schegg, R. (Eds), Information and Communication
Technologies in Tourism 2016, Springer, Cham, pp. 45-57.
Hamari, J., Koivisto, J. and Sarsa, H. (2014), “Does gamification work? A literature review of
empirical studies on gamification”, 47th HI International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE,
Hawaii, (pp. 3025-3034).
Höpken, W., Fuchs, M., Keil, D. and Lexhagen, M. (2011), “The knowledge destination – a customer
information-based destination management information system”, in Law, R., Fuchs, M. and Ricci, F.
(Eds), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2011, Springer, Vienna, pp. 417-429.
Huotari, K. and Hamari, J. (2012), “Defining gamification – a service marketing perspective”,
Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media
Environments, ACM, Tampere, pp. 17-22.
Kiráľová, A. (2015), “The place of gamification in tourism destinations’ marketing”, Idimt-2015: Information
Technology and Society Interaction and Interdependence, Vol. 44 No. 2014, pp. 201-206.
Kovac
evic
 , I., Zec

evic
 , B. and Veljkovic
, S. (2014), “‘Gamification’ concept: theoretical framework and
destination marketing management practice”, Ekonomika Preduzeca, Vol. 62 Nos 5/6, pp. 315-322.
Kuo, M.S. and Chuang, T.Y. (2016), “How gamification motivates visits and engagement for online
academic dissemination – an empirical study”, Computers in Human Behavior, Elsevier, Vol. 55,
pp. 16-27.
Lim, M.Y., Taylor, N.K. and Gallacher, S.M. (2015), “SUMMIT: supporting rural tourism with motivational
intelligent technologies”, In Westphall, C.B., Mauri, J.L. and Pochec, P. (Eds), UBICOMM 2015: The Ninth
International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies, IARIA,
Nice, pp. 64-69.
Lin, T.T.C., Paragas, F., Goh, D. and Bautista, J.R. (2013), “Developing location-based mobile
advertising in Singapore: a socio-technical perspective”, Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
Elsevier, Vol. 103 No. 2016, pp. 334-349.

Moral, P., Gonzalez, P. and Plaza, B. (2014), “Methodologies for monitoring website performance:
assessing the effectiveness of AdWords campaigns on a tourist SME website”, Online Information
Review, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 575-588.
 , A., Tutunea, M. and Rus, R. (2015), “Exploring gamification techniques
a, A., Toader, V., Sofica
Negrus
and applications for sustainable tourism”, Sustainability, Vol. 7 No. 8, pp. 11160-11189.

Nunes, M.D.O. and Mayer, V.F. (2014), “Mobile technology, games and nature areas: the tourist
perspective”, Tourism & Management Studies, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 53-58.

Peretta, R. (2014), “Evaluating mobile applications for urban tourism”, Journal of Tourism, Culture and
Territorial Development, Vol. 5 No.1, pp. 13-35.

Plaza, B. (2009), “Monitoring web traffic source effectiveness with google analytics: an experiment with
time series”, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 61 No. 5, pp. 474-482.

Plaza, B. (2011), “Google analytics for measuring website performance”, Tourism Management, Vol. 32
No. 3, pp. 477-481.

Ryan, R. and Deci, E. (2000), “Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions”,
Contemporary Educational Psychology, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 54-67.
Seaborn, K. and Fels, D.I. (2015), “Gamification in theory and action: a survey”, International Journal of
Human Computer Studies, Vol. 74 No. C, pp. 14-31.
Sigala, M. (2015a), “Gamification for crowdsourcing marketing practices: applications and benefits in
tourism”, in Fernando, J., Garrigos-Simon, I., Gil-Pechuán and Estelles-Miguel, S. (Eds), Advances in
Crowdsourcing, Springer, Cham, pp. 129-145.

PAGE 48 j TOURISM REVIEW j VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019

Sigala, M. (2015b), “The application and impact of gamification funware on trip planning and
experiences: the case of TripAdvisor’s funware”, Electronic Markets, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 189-209.

Stadler, D. and Bilgram, V. (2016), “Gamification: best practices in research and tourism”, in Roman
Egger, I.G. and Walcher, D. (Eds), Open Tourism, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 363-370.
Wolff, A., Mulholland, P., Maguire, M. and O’Donovan, D. (2014), “Mobile technology to support coherent
story telling across freely explored outdoor artworks”, 11th Conference on Advances in Computer
Entertainment Technology (ACE’14), ACM, Funchal, Portugal.
Xu, F., Buhalis, D. and Weber, J. (2017), “Serious games and the gamification of tourism”, Tourism
Management, Vol. 60 (June), pp. 244-256.
Xu, F., Weber, J. and Buhalis, D. (2014), “Gamification in tourism”, in Xiang, Z. and Tussyadiah, I. (Eds),
Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2014, Springer International Publishing, Cham,
pp. 525-537.
Xu, F., Tian, F., Buhalis, D. and Weber, J. (2013), “Marketing tourism via electronic games: understanding
the motivation of tourist players”, 5th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious
Applications, VS-GAMES 2013, IEEE, Poole.
Xu, F., Tian, F., Buhalis, D., Weber, J. and Zhang, H. (2016), “Tourists as mobile gamers: gamification for
tourism marketing”, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, Vol. 33 No. 8, pp. 1124-1142.
Yılmaz, H. and Cos _
kun, I.O. (2016), “New toy of marketing communication in tourism: gamification”, in
Sezgin, E. (Ed.), e-Consumers in the Era of New Tourism, Springer, Singapore, pp. 53-71.

Corresponding author
Ander Garcia can be contacted at: agarcia@vicomtech.org

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

VOL. 74 NO. 1 2019 j TOURISM REVIEW j PAGE 49

Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction
prohibited without permission.