A Framework for GPS-Based Tourism Games to Improve Spatiotemporal Management of the Regional Movements of Visitors

Predicting and planning tourists' spatiotemporal mobility and movement patterns play a vital role in managing and designing tourism destinations, transportation optimization, traffic control, advertising, and so on. Also, exploring and experiencing tourist sites is one of the main goals and concerns of tourists who should be encouraged enough to visit that area. This paper presents a framework for GPS-based tourism games (GBTG) to improve spatiotemporal management of the regional movements of visitors in tourist areas. This framework has been designed based on the strategic management model of Fred R. David and the gamification classification of Werbach and Hunter by studying previous gamified works in this field. The developed application-game for this framework has a set of innovations, including the combined use of Augmented Reality (AR) and GPS based gamified scenario to proceed. Such a combination of rich features of this framework, in addition, to allow the authorities and policymakers of the tourism sector to make strategic decisions in the relevant area, which previously was not possible nor cost-effective, results in better tourists experience. Also, the structure of this framework, which has considered the game elements in itself, can be used by the game developers of this field.