Gamified tourist scavenger hunts, the key to extending the tourist season

Gamified augmented reality scavenger hunts are in fashion. The truth is that everyone loves to play, which is why more and more towns are launching these interactive games to encourage tourism.

These scavenger hunts also have many advantages. First, all you need to play and discover the town in a fun way is a mobile phone with internet access to download a free app, making it a simple development that is accessible to everyone. The scavenger hunt lets people take a tourist, cultural or shopping tour of the town independently, with no need for guides or fixed timetables, while getting all the tourist and cultural information in an engaging, interactive way.

SCAVENGER HUNTS WITH AUGMENTED REALITY

There are many ways to create a highly enjoyable experience with these scavenger hunts. For example, a series of fun challenges can be designed for players of different ages, and augmented reality can be built into the app to surprise users along the way.

Augmented reality is one of the fastest-growing immersive technologies, and the audience enjoying it grows every day. With augmented reality, visitors can see places in the town as they were in the past, be surprised by new virtual elements or characters at monuments, or become one of the most important figures in the town's history as they take the tour.

At the end of the scavenger hunt, users receive a prize for taking part, which is also an incentive to promote other services in the town, for example by offering discounts at local shops or restaurants.

All this helps boost tourism and spread it throughout the year, with new visits in every season, and gets people who have already visited the town to rediscover it through fun challenges. At the same time, visitor interaction with the town increases, since fun photos from the scavenger hunts can be shared on social media and the experience can be commented on and rated.

Another advantage is that it is a sustainable technology tool, encouraging people to explore on foot without using transport and greatly reducing the tourist information that used to be handed out on paper.

Since the pandemic, scavenger hunts of this kind have multiplied because they help avoid overcrowding at certain cultural and heritage sites.

At REM Experience we specialise in developing gamified scavenger hunts in which visitors enjoy a tourist route through play. Each scavenger hunt is fully customised and includes a geolocated route in which visitors pick up the most relevant information about the town while completing fun challenges and quizzes.

One example is the scavenger hunt we created for El Pla de Santa Maria, an app that lets residents and visitors discover the town and its heritage sites through interactive techniques, games and guides with 3D animation.

Augmented reality and 3D animation recreate the map of the town and the different stages of the route. The challenges are questions about monuments and points of interest, and players have to use their powers of observation and their knowledge to solve them. Some come with photographs, graphics and even 3D images.

In other cases, tourist apps like these don't need to be scavenger hunts at all, just apps that make cultural and tourist information more accessible, engaging and sustainable. For example, at REM Experience we developed an app that combines augmented reality and 3D images for visiting an important archaeological site in Menorca, Torre d'en Galmés.

The app provides additional information through visual interactions and 3D animations and also offers an audio guide that reveals all the secrets of the route.