Designing an immersive tour experience system for cultural tour sites

ABSTRACT

Along with the change in tour paradigm, tourists are increasingly seeking for new and meaningful experiences. However, most cultural tour sites today still maintain a conventional form of tour that is static and information centered. To reflect the new needs of tourists, the concept of immersive tour experience has been investigated. Immersive tour experience refers to a type of tour where the tourist lively experiences the historical scenes that occurred at the tour site, as if the tourist had traveled to the past. A system named "Immersive Tour Post" was designed to realize this concept. This system is in a post form and uses of audio and video Augmented Reality to provide the immersive experience. Through an experiment conducted at an actual tour site, this application proved to increase the interest level as well as facilitate understanding of the content. Through this research, the potential of immersive tour experience in improving the quality of tour for cultural tour sites was verified. Moreover, a new user experience was developed by implementing HCI technology in a new context. With further development, the proposed system is expected to become a useful application that attracts tourists and create greater value for our cultural assets.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.m MISCELLANEOUS

Keywords:
augmented reality, cultural heritage, immersive experience, tourism