Francesca TOMEI | Marta LAZZARONI | Veronica SELVANETTI | Teo BASILI
(University of Padova, Lucca, Italy)
Keywords: heritage caching, web-app, promotion, tourism, accessibilty
Abstract:
Gamification has been taking part of many field during last years, and in the near future will get inside digital tourism, according to World Travel Market Report 2013 previsions. Gaming with smartphones and tablets may offer a combination of experience, culture and creativity which tourists will look for more and more in the near future. Gaming is also giving a great hand to knowledge and promotion of cultural heritage and they are coming out many kinds of “educational games”, working as geocaches.
This project aims to promote and give historical features on the Walls of Lucca (Tuscany, Italy) though a “Walls Geocache”, combining the use of a web-app and the presence of a real tourist guide. The web-app works like Geocaching with a geolocated map of the walls of Lucca and people will play three levels, corresponding to the chronology of the walls (Roman, Medieval, Modern). The guide time by time will send to the web-app tasks to be solved to reach next “point of interest” and will give historical and archaeological information on it. People will play in groups and may decide to play all together or to challenge. At the end tourists will get a complete historical view on the main cultural heritage of the town, after having an involving experience where they played the main role.
The innovation of this idea leads on the web-app accessible to every mobile devices with a internet connection and on the presence of a tourist guide, which will not leave alone the tourist, giving tasks, help and information. The idea is also replicable and applicable to other places, towns/cities/archaeological sites, in order to give a new way to experience and promote cultural heritage.
This project got a funding from a local ONG and will be developed in the next months.
