Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that combines virtual elements with the real world, allowing users to experience a mix of physical and digital reality.
Augmented reality combines the real world and the virtual world in real time, registering the computer-generated images with the user’s physical environment, and overlaying that computer-generated information on the view of reality.[1]
Augmented Reality in the Tourism Industry[editar]
Augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a promising technology in the tourism industry, transforming the way tourists experience and explore travel destinations. AR combines virtual elements with the physical environment, giving users a rich and interactive experience. In the tourism industry, AR has found various applications that enhance the experience of travelers and offer new ways to interact with tourist destinations.
Applications of Augmented Reality in Tourism[editar]
- Interactive tourist guides: Through augmented reality applications, tourists can access interactive tourist guides that provide them with contextual information about points of interest, history and relevant facts. These guides use the overlay of virtual information in real time to enrich the user experience.
- Immersive museum experiences: Museums have embraced augmented reality to offer more interactive and immersive experiences to visitors. By overlaying virtual elements such as 3D models, videos and additional content, visitors can explore exhibits in a more dynamic and educational way.
Benefits and Future Prospects[editar]
The incorporation of augmented reality in the tourism industry has shown several potential benefits, including:
- Reduction of the language barrier through real-time translations
- Improved navigation and orientation in unknown tourist destinations
- Greater immersion in historical and cultural experiences through virtual reconstructions.
In the future, augmented reality is expected to continue to evolve and offer new possibilities in the tourism industry. Recent research indicates the potential for AR to further personalize travel experiences and provide interactive location-based services.
What are the 7 most common uses of AR in tourism?[editar]
1.- Access to special events and exclusive information: more and more information will be on this type of media, leaving paper or traditional media aside.
You can access tickets, information on events such as concerts, musicals, plays, meetings, etc.
2.- Interaction with museums: how many times have we missed someone in a museum who tells us what we are seeing? You can do it with a guide, but the schedules are strict.
You can go with a book, but it’s just another piece of junk and they’re expensive. Or, you can go with your Smartphone and Augmented Reality.
3.- Know the place where you are, your tourist destination. Wherever you are, you will have first-hand information about the place where you are, locate the most interesting, or little-known, or fashionable points at that moment.
Augmented reality allows you to easily and simply.
4.- Outdoor games. Although it started very discreetly, this area of Augmented Reality is developing at full speed. AR games let you know your surroundings as you play.
There are games whose goal is for you to interact with your city. For example TimeWarp.
5.- Recreate historical events or life in the past. AR allows us in a given location to be able to recreate and visualize how people lived in the past, or some important historical event that has developed at the point where we are at that moment.
Can you imagine being in the Bastille during its storming? Or seeing what the Berlin Wall was like in the same place it was in? Or maybe what the games were like in the Colosseum? There isn’t much left for that.
6.- Information about how to get around the city. With AR, we can know which bus or subway lines are nearby, where they take us and where they come from.
The use of AR to be able to move more easily through an unknown city is a reality today. You can indicate where you want to go, and it advises you on how to get there and what you are seeing while you move.
7.- AR Translation. The application word lens It allows you to go translating all the posters and the information that you are seeing. So you don’t leave anything on the road. Or you don’t enter where you shouldn’t!
Especially in countries where the alphabet is completely different from yours, or customs make us make mistakes.[2]
Examples of success in incorporating AR and tourism[editar]
- ARMedia and the Colosseum: A few years ago, the Italian company ARMedia designed a utility so that tourists visiting the Colosseum in Rome have the chance to see, after focusing on it with their mobile phones, what the popular monument was like during the splendor stage of the Roman Empire.
- Another example is Trick Eye, in the town of Mexico. A museum that offers visitors to combine artistic wonders with 3D and AR technology. It has 95 projects that take on a life of their own when you focus on them with the device, like an erupting volcano or a colossal fire-breathing dragon.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum closed its doors permanently. For those who want to understand more about the habitat of the region they are visiting, there is the alternative of visiting interpretation centers.
- In Spain there are some who have incorporated AR to suggest a greater experience at the moment of publicizing its contents, such as the Interpretation Center of the Military Order of Calatrava in Alcaudete (Jaén) or the Zamudio Technology Interpretation Center (Vizcaya).
- In Spain there is also the example of gandia town hall, which created the idea Alter ECO (‘Alternative tourist strategies to enhance the local sustainable development of tourism by promoting Mediterranean Identity’). This venture has created two apps to show visitors the town through gamification and AR. Recently, it was chosen by the European Commission as an example of similar good practices with capable localities.
- Even through RA there are situations in which it is not required to move from home to carry out tourism. Even, to know places that, in another way, would not be viable. This is exactly what the group venture between the Museum of Altamira, Facebook and Instagram offers, coinciding with the 140th anniversary of the discovery of the caves. By installing an easy filter in these applications, it is possible to see in RA the paintings that decorate the walls of the Santillana del Mar cave.[3]
References[editar]
