Gamification has become a focus of attention in an increasing number of fields including business, education, and health care. Through a wide range of applications and support functions, its potential for the tourism industry is significant.Gamification of tourism can contribute to a more rewarding interactions and higher level of satisfaction, as well as increase brand awareness and loyalty to the destination.As one of the first attempts to conceptualise gamification of tourism, this paper examines gaming in general terms and the application of it in specific tourism fields.It identifies game design elements that can contribute to a meaningful gamification. A few cases of best practices are presented to show how this innovative concept can benefit tourism marketing. Implications for tourism marketing and management are discussed as well as future research recommendations.

Abstract:Gaming is rapidly developing as a method of dynamic interaction and experience development. This cutting edge concept of gaming has recently been used by some innovative tourism sectors as a marketing tool and as a method of deeper engagement with visitors. However, little is known in the sector about gaming and tourist game players. This research aims to explore the gamification trend and the potential that gaming is offering for experience development and tourism marketing. Through focus group, this paper discusses gaming and tourism, explores what drives tourists to play games. The results suggest tourists' game playing motivation is multi-dimensional. The majority of players would start with a purposive information seeking, then move onto an intrinsic stimulation, such as fun, challenge and achievement. Socialization is also an important dimension and increasingly players will play with locals or fellow travelers. The research demonstrates several implications for tourism marketing and game design.

This paper compares the travel behaviour and attitudes of two different nationalities of undergraduate students from the United Kingdom and China. The survey did fi nd some similarities between the two. Both groups enjoyed beach holidays, and placed importance on having fun and relaxing after their studies. Both were motivated to discover somewhere new and both preferred to eat the local food of the destination. In other ways, the two groups showed signifi cant differences. The Chinese students thought it more important to see the famous sights and learn about other cultures and history, while the British were more concerned to have fun, to socialise and enjoy the challenges of outdoor adventure. These differences were found to exist in both male and female groups. The paper discusses the extent to which these differences could be explained by cultural factors as opposed to market factors or the students' previous experience in their travel career.

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This research undertook a visitor survey in two protected areas in different cultural contexts, namely China and the UK, to explore whether the value a person attaches to the environment influences their attitude towards sustainable tourism development in national parks. Structural equation models were developed with data from 597 and 368 questionnaires collected in Jiuzhaigou National Scenic Area, China and the New Forest National Park, UK respectively. The results suggested that anthropocentric or ecocentric values significantly influence people's attitudes to tourism and sustainable development. The same structured causal relationship was found in both samples, between people's attitudes towards the natural environment, conservation and tourism in a national park context.

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Domestic and tourism pro-environment behaviors (PEBs) are often found to be related. While pro-environmental behavior in the domestic context is well-studied, virtually no research has examined consistency in PEBs across domestic and tourism contexts. Here, we examined potential consistency and spillover effects between PEBs in domestic and tourism contexts using at 717-participant questionnaire study dataset, analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation modeling (PLS-SEM). We also considered potential mediators and moderators of these relationships. The results show significant positive relationships between domestic PEBs and tourism PEBs, with environmental attachment and pro-environmental identity positively related, and moral licensing beliefs negatively related, to consistency between PEBs in both contexts. Pro-environmental identity and moral licensing beliefs were found to partly mediate the association between PEBs in both contexts, whereas environmental attachment had a positive moderating effect. We discuss the implications of these results for strengthening positive relationships between domestic and tourism PEBs, and thus fostering cross-contextual spillover.