Marketing tourism via electronic games: understanding the motivation of tourist players Feifei Xu 1 , Feng Tian 2 , Dimitrios Buhalis 1 , Jessika Weber 1 1 School of Tourism, Bournemouth University, UK 2 School of Design, Engineering & Computing, Bournemouth University, UK Abstract—Marketing tourism via games is a new phenomenon. This research uses a qualitative method to explore the motivation of tourist players. Through content analysis of the focus group results, it identifies five reasons to play a tourism game on holiday, namely, curiosity; exploration; socialization; fun and fantasy experience; and challenge and achievement. Suggestions to tourism marketing are drawn based on the findings. Key words—tourism marketing; mobile game; tourist game player; motivation I. Introduction The tourism industry is an experience industry [1]. New technologies such as social media, mobile technology, and gaming provide technological tools for developing such experiences. Indeed, the travel industry has always been one of the first ones to engage new initiatives [2]. According to the World Travel Market Report [3], gamification is a major trend for the coming years in tourism, which will appeal to consumers across all age demographics. The current use of gaming by the tourism industry can be divided into two types: 1) online/offline games, mainly used for brand awareness, to attract potential customers and to build up a destination image; 2) location based mobile games, mainly used to encourage more engagement on site and to enhance tourists on site experiences with the destination in a more fun and informative way [4]. Although there are other games which are not developed for tourism purpose, they can sometimes also be used by tourism industry. For example, Second Life, has been used to bring new products and to change a potential visitor’s destination image [5]. Researchers assert the emergency of virtual reality provides an immersive environment with a realistic experience to support the way humans communicate in real life [5]. Some Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) have responded and designed their own games. Examples can be found in Thailand [6], Capetown [7], Ireland [8] and China [9]. Besides these online/offline games, there are also some location based games which target tourists, such as REXplorer which aim at persuading on site tourists to explore and enjoy the history of the UNESCO world heritage city of Regensburg, Germany [10]. However, these game apps are not always successful. Some fail to engage travellers, as they lack of fun and hardly implement facts about tourist spots [11]. Game developers who have a technical background are often not fully aware of tourists’ needs and motivation to play. Therefore, a user centred approach in game design is critical [12]. A sufficient understanding of tourist players’ motives and gaming experiences will be helpful in designing these games. Although there are theories on game player motivations, they are not specifically addressed to tourists, thus failed to identify tourists’ needs. Why tourists play games, when they play, what type of games do they prefer and what do they expect from game based marketing are all critical aspects of game design. The aim of this paper is to explore the opportunities and challenges of using game-based marketing in tourism. In doing so, there are three objectives: to identify a conceptual framework for understanding tourists’ motives of playing games before, during and after holiday; to understand tourists’ expectations of game-based marketing; to make recommendations for DMOs. II. Literature Review 2.1 Game-based marketing: a new form of digital marketing Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick recognized that there are 12 trends of the future of marketing; gamification as the 6 th trend and mobile marketing the 10 th trend [13]. Jobber mentions that the digital technology is re-shaping the entire marketing mix [14]. In terms of game-based marketing, it adds more fun and personal experience to marketing the