Footour: Designing and Developing a Location-Based Game for Senior Tourism in the miOne Community

Abstract

In a fast-paced and ageing society, the use of digital platforms to foster senior tourism has become a central issue for finding new strategies to engage senior citizens in retirement, usually an experience period of new sensations and family leisure-travel. In fact, senior citizens are a target group that is growing in terms of domestic tourism with longer overnight stays at a destination, in comparison to younger age groups. This paper describes the process of designing, developing and assessing a Location-based Game for Senior Tourism, entitled Footour. Five participants aged between 59 and 72 (M = 68, SD = 4.82) tested one of the routes proposed in the game relative to the Aveiro City, in a tourism setting. Participant observation and questionnaire surveying were employed. The participants were surveyed about travel planning, criteria for visiting a place and game functionalities. Results indicated that they usually choose places with historical settings and search previously about the place and social activities. The following functionalities were found to affect the whole digitally-mediated experience: (a) Association of historical information to Points-of-Interest; (b) Share of resources, status and social activities; and (c) Interlinking past/present photographs and other content to the visited places and routes.