Tourism Marketing through
Virtual Environment Experience
Aldrin Acosta F†., Washington X. Quevedo†, Víctor H. Andaluz†,
Cristian Gallardoǂ, Jaime Santanaǂ, Juan C. Castro‡, Mauricio Quisimalin‡ and
Víctor H. Córdova‡.
†
Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE, Sangolquí-Ecuador
{agacosta,wjquevedo,vhandaluz1}@espe.edu.ec
‡
Universidad Técnica de Ambato, Ambato-Ecuador
{juanccastro,hernanmquisimalin,victorhcordova}@uta.edu.ec
ǂ
cmgallardop@gmail.com, ǂjaimesantanal@hotmail.com
ABSTRACT
This article proposes the develop of a dynamic virtual
environment that with the consumption of real time data about the
state of a place, offer an immersion to the tourist like be at the
desired location. The development implements a communication
and loader structure from many information sources, manual
information data loaded from mobile devices and data loader from
collecting equipment that get environmental and atmospheric data.
The virtual reality application use Google Maps, and worldwide
heightmap to get 3D geographic map models; HTC VIVE and
Oculus SDK for support virtual reality experience; and weather
API to show the weather information from the desired location in
real time. In addition, the proposed virtual reality application
emphasizes user interaction on the virtual environment by
displaying dynamic and up-to-date information about tourism
services.
CCS Concepts
• Software and its engineering ➝ Virtual worlds training
simulations • Human-centered computing ➝ Interface design
prototyping.
Keywords
Virtual reality; mobile applications; tourist information; user
experience.
1. INTRODUCTION
Tourism is an activity related to travel, recreation, spreading or
other forms of leisure, which has become a strategy to boost the
economy of the countries; in the last six decades, has experienced
a continuous expansion and diversification, becoming one of the
economic sectors of greater scope and growth in the world. The
growth of tourism activity is due in large part to the development,
investment and use of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs), which enabled countries to develop their
capacity to communicate with the outside world and initiate
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific
permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.
ICETC 2017, December 20-22, 2017, Barcelona, Spain
© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5435-6/17/12…$15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3175536.3176651
262
strategies to promote, market and even offer new proposals, such
as virtual recreation and direct and indirect presence in video
games, music, museums, parks, squares, etc., showing an
increasing tendency towards virtualization and coming through
digital means to tourists. In the publication [1] 2007 was the year
in which travel in the United States has been bought more through
the Internet (51%), than through conventional channels, and
growth is forecast to be over 60% in the coming years.
The technological changes of the sector and the demand, for some
experts are a necessity of change in the action of the activities and
tourist services. Destinations should provide technological and
communication tools capable of offering personalized, interactive
information and even offer a deep view into the products and
services offered (virtual and augmented reality). The number of
persons that are participating in conversations that are generated
in virtual networks searching for experiences close to reality are
growing. Millions of blogs are active in the world, in which
photos and videos are published, many about tourism and travel,
making online search engines the tool to plan a trip [2].
For this reason, e-tourism appears as a new model of tourism
business, constituted as a "virtual society of travelers" that
through the use of the internet and technological networks carry
out promotion, marketing, management, etc., among all the actors
that make up the tourism supply and demand: hotels, restaurants,
travel agencies, transport and entertainment; allowing also the
exchange of travel experiences and recommendations of the users
-tourists-, achieving effective communication channels.
In this technological and communicational change, marketing
plays a fundamental role in marketing and tourism promotion,
being a way of identifying What attracts to the tourists? And
What excites them with the product and service offered? Tourism
marketing [3] becomes the tool that "allows to know and
understand the market to achieve a truly attractive, competitive,
varied and able to get customers willing to consume the touristic
products and services" [4]. Achieving create and deliver value to
customers, designing and promoting products and services
appropriate to the market and technological advances [5].
This relationship: tourism, technology and marketing, seeks to
characterize a system of promotion and marketing through virtual
reality, configuring new scenarios (augmented reality) and
products (virtual reality) within the e - tourism line. These
elements of tourism heritage are the analysis and projection
variables for the proposed research: promotion and marketing
through virtual reality, whose purpose is to develop an application
that shows virtual tourism products (3D) according to the new
techniques of marketing (3.0) so that the tourist through an At the moment the user accesses the data of a certain location this
immersion of virtual and augmented reality armed its itinerary and data may not be true to reality which leads to having a wrong
plan of trip motivated by the gamification of activities, challenges image or proves to be insufficiently interesting. This difficulty
and promotions of the site of visit, commercialized virtually under forces us to think of a system that provides facilities for the
the concept of Tourist Destinations 3.0 collection of information and that centralizes it for consumption in
third-party applications.
The database is fed with the inventories and tourist registers of the
provinces and their cities and thus design innovative products Table 1. Variety touristic products
(DM3.0): routes, circuits and visit centers, creating scenarios Line Variety
promoted by augmented reality, promoted and commercialized General Roads General Circuits
virtually. Sun and Beach Sun and Beach
Community tourism Community tourism
2. TOURIST ACTION Cultural heritages
In tourism one of the essential elements of the offer are tourist Markets and crafts
Gastronomy
attractions, which constitute the raw material and fundamental
Shamanism
pillar of activities and services that promote demand. They are the Popular festivals
central elements for the tourism dynamics and value chain, and Cultural tourism Religious tourism
the World Tourism Organization (OMT) defines them as "all the Urban tourism
possessions and services that through the human's activity and the Archaeological tourism
means with which it works, make possible the tourist activity and CAVE, scientic, academic, voluntary and
satisfy the necessities of the demand"[6]. All the natural and educational
cultural resources that possess attractive qualities and have the Themed parks Themed parks
potential to motivate and satisfy tourist needs are part of the National parks
Ecotourism and nature Reserves and private forests
tourist heritage of a locality, country or region, together with the
tourism Rivrs, lakes, lagoons and waterfalls
hotel structure and support infrastructure, all together structured Observation of flora and fauna
the tourism products that give meaning to the supply and demand Land sports
of the sector [7]. Sports and adventure Fluvial sports
tourism Aerial sports
Through tourist inventories, the attraction's level, the potential Watersports
value of the resource and the possibilities of use and exploitation Thermalism
are known, they are the "catalog of places, objects or events of Health tourism Ancestral medicine
tourist interest in a given area" [6] [8]. The tourism cadasters SPAs
identify the tourism service providers registered in the city and Agricultural tourism Ranchs, farms, plantations
province for: lodging, food, transportation, agency and Congress tourism and Meetings, incentives, conferences,
entertainment [9]. Therefore, a tourist cadaster collects relevant conventions exhibitions and fairs
data on establishments such as: name, category, type, places and Cruise tourism Cruise ships
service they provide, among other relevant aspects; this
information is entered into the cloud (in cloud) to process it and
generate outputs (out-cloud) for the use by tourists and tourism
3. SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
With the goal of implement a system that provides interoperability,
companies through the use of digital, smarts and mobile devices
extensibility, scalability and modularity for an optimum
that allows immersion through the promoted (routes and tourist
maintenance and future growth, this work proposes the follow
resorts) and the interaction of the tourist to complete the
scheme, see Figure. 1.
challenges in the route(s) and motivate to complete the tourist
circuit that gives rise to the promotional benefits of each tourist
center, e.g., discounts, exchanges, gratuities , etc.
In product design, the line and variety of tourism products are
considered and the tourist can choose the desired product,
according to their interest, motivation and even physical condition,
see Table 1.
In addition, the design of tourism products adds virtualization of
tourist sites through 3D virtual reality environments and
marketing 3.0 approach, in order to build the concept and image
of tourist destination, tourist routes around the attractive of sight
of the locality and delimiting tourist centers according to the
concentration of the hotel plan and of available services.
Contributing to tourism promotion and achieving the interaction
and immersion of multiple users in recreated and / or virtualized
environments of tourist scenarios, in order to show real-time
information on the weather conditions, services and activities that
can be performed, thus answering the three main questions of
every tourist What to do? What to eat? and Where to sleep?
becoming a tool for the marketing and marketing of smart
Figure 1. System Deployment Layers.
products and in the medium of promotion and tourism diffusion.

263
i) Information Gathering
The process of collecting information is done from different
origins, manually (from Excel sheets, word documents or the
transcription / digitization of existing information on physical
media such as sheets, forms, books, etc.) or semiautomatic form
with the use of a mobile application, which is proposed in this
information lifecycle scheme in the data collection section, this
application allows to upload information to the system from each
tourist destination, see Figure 2.
Figure 2. Menu options display.
The developed application allows to enter, modify and eliminate
the sections that is shown in the sliding menu, being the most
important point, the work with data related to tourist places, see
Figure 3.
Figure 3. New places insert.
The insertion of new place allows to enter the data previously
selected for its relevant interest for the tourist. The values of
latitude and longitude can be entered: i) manually; ii) real-time
scanning interface of device location; and iii) navigate manually
on the map and specify a geographical point, see Figure 4. The
category and town load are done using a floating interface with
information previously loaded.
264
Figure 4. List of places entered.
All the places that are in the database can be consulted, edited and
eliminated.
Figure 5. Synchronization and status.
We can find a large number of places with little or no cellular
coverage for data/internet service utilization, for that reason, the
local storage functionality is implemented on a SQlite3 database
which save all the collected information in order to be able to
perform a later synchronization of the information. Following the
information synchronization process, it is important to implement
a synchronization process Status viewer to keep track of new,
updated and deleted records, see Figure 5.
ii) Storage and centralization of information and services
For access to the storage layer we choose an API REST [12],
which abstracts all functionalities and processes implemented for
centralization, registry, update and deletion of information.
Internally for the storage of information a non-relational database
(Mongo DB) is used because of the advantages of allowing to
store information with a non-preset data structure, i.e., that allows
to add attributes dynamically according to the changing and
growing information of the tourism sector, which allows the
storage of the data, reflecting the reality of each environment and
stored in the database.
The interaction with the API is done through HTTP requests of
different types (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) depending on the
operation to be performed with the information stored in the
database and available on the network through the RESTful API,
eg, to obtain the list of places in a canton can be done through a
request type GET to the URL of the API REST
http://localhost/api/cantones/2/lugares, see Figure 6.

Figure 6. HTTP request of GET type.
The API information is returned in JSON (JavaScript Object
Notation) format, it is a light format for data exchange [10] [11], it
is easy to read and write for humans and simple manipulation and
generation by the machines. To create a new resource in the API,
see Fig. 7, use a POST-type request to the root URL of the type of
resource to be created, e.g., to create a new place, JSON data is
sent as parameters to the URL http://localhost/api/lugares , see
Figure 6.
Figure 7. POST request parameters for place creation.
To edit an existing resource in the API, see Figure 8, use a PUT
request to the API URL by passing the primary key of the element
to be edited as a parameter, and a JSON structure with the data to
be update.
Figure 8. PUT request parameters for editing a category.
To remove a resource, see Fig. 9, a DELETE type request is made
to the URL by passing the primary key of the element to be
deleted as a parameter.
Figure 9. DELETE type request to delete a category.
265
iii) Virtual Reality App
In the information consumption layer by third-party applications,
a virtual reality application has been developed that reads weather
data by using the Climate Server and Georeferencing APIs as
AccuWeather. In addition, the data that are in the previous layer
of storage called TurismoVR API. The collected data are
manifested through dynamic objects such as text windows, images
and videos in 360, amid effects and behavior of the virtual
environment that obeys the real-time climatic conditions of the
place of interest of the user. The control scripts developed to
control the consumption and user interaction layer are detailed in
Figure 10.
Figure 10. VR App System structure.
In the Unity 3D visualization phase, there are the objects that the
user looks at when using the virtual reality glasses. Objects can
differ from static ones such as 3D models, geographic maps, audio,
and dynamic objects such as text, photo viewers and 360-
optimized images for mobile devices that download content from
the base [13], in addition to the information shown in the user
interface.
The script phase is the center of the application where you control
the behavior of the app before the inputs by the user. The Data
API and TurismoVR Data Consumption API blocks are the ones
that manage and perform the queries to the centralized
information bases [14], so affecting the dynamic objects. The
object controller allows the user to have a control of the user
interaction with interface control elements such as buttons, sliders,
and so on. The Map driver allows mapping and finding directions
on the map with GPS coordinates of the tourist site where the
information will be displayed. The input controller is responsible
for managing and supporting the hardware that will enter
information into the app through the user interface. In the Inputs
phase are the GearVR and HTC VIVE devices that will run the
app.
The outputs phase shows all the changes and reactions that were
developed in the virtual environment and will be transmitted by
haptic, auditory response and on the screen of the input device.
The operation of the proposed solution shows the tourist points of
interest for the user, weather information in the area in real time
and forecast for the next 4 days, all within a geographical
environment taken with real altitude data and textures of the
locality of Baños de Agua Santa, see Figure 11. The points and
the information displayed in the weather widget come from the
APIs of AccuWeather and TurismoVR.
Figure 11. Capturing the main scene of the app.
When the user looks around you can point to the destinations
marked on the map, to select should be stared and click on the
touch panel of the glasses. see Figure 12.
a) Cascadas Inés María b) Mirador Bellavista
Figure 12. Select points of interest.
After selecting a point, appears in the left panel a text window that
shows a brief description of the place. see Figure 13 (a). In the
right panel there are two spheres that show video and 360-picture
of the selected place. see Figure 13 (b).
a) Text window b) 360 photo and video spheres
Figure 13. Dynamic Game Objects.
If the user selects the photo sphere, images in 360 of the selected
location are displayed. see Figure 14, while selecting the video
sphere initializes the video player in 360, see Figure 15. Both
elements have playback controls as: previous, next and exit.
Figure 14. 360 photo viewer.
266
Figure 15. 360 video player.
4. METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS
For the methodology and analysis of results, the specifications and
guidelines of the experiment are established; the same that intend
to guide and influence the user to visit the city of Baños de Agua
Santa located in the province of Tungurahua. to achieve this has
been included updated and dynamic information of relevant
tourist sites for the user, while complemented with the
visualization of photos and videos in 360. through the automation
layers of information gathering with a mobile app and data storage
using API Rest. The app that consumes the data has compatibility
with mobile systems GearVR and standalone HTC VIVE, see
Figure 16.
Figure 16. VR Tourism running on a GearVR device.
The development of the experiment is done with GearVR glasses
and hearing aids for surround sound reproduction, in the hardware
part and in the part of testers it is used to make two groups of 5
people who will be asked to perform the following task.
One group will have access to a website with static tourist
information of baths, with photos and videos of the places of
interest of the tester, while the other group will be made a session
of 5 minutes per person with the virtual reality app, time in which
they can access the functionalities described in section IV
Description of the proposal. At the end of the test, the experiment
participants will be asked to carry out a survey that collects
information that the user wishes to have acquired. plus, feedback
information from the app to check the level of acceptance of the
app. To this end, the SUS summary evaluation method is used
[15]. in which a Likert style scale [16] is obtained that generates a
unique number, represented a mean composed by the usability of
the global system under study. The questions are 10 selected, see
Table 2, out of 50 that agglutinate the most consistent and
polarized responses.
The selected points have a correlation between 0.7 and 0.9. the
weighting goes from 1 to 5 meaning in complete disagreement
and completely agree respectively. To calculate the SUS score,
first add the contributions of each point, that contribution will
have a range of 0 to 4. For the numbers 1,3,5,7 and 9, the
contribution will be the position of the scale minus1. For points
2,4,6,8 and 10, the contribution will be 5 minus the position on the
scale. The sum of the results is multiplied by 2.5 to obtain the
overall SUS value. The result will be in the range of 0 and 100.
For the answers indicated to the questions, the following table is 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
obtained. The authors would like to thanks for the technical support for the
Table 2. Questionnaire Results execution of this work to The Research Laboratory: Atomation,
Questions Score Operation Robotics and Intelligent Systems of the Universidad de las
Fuerzas Armadas ESPE-Latacunga (www.giarsei.com)
1. Do I think I would like to use this 5 5-1=4
system frequently? 7. REFERENCES
2. Do I find this system unnecessarily 1 5-1=4 [1] Panorama OMT del Turismo Internacional. Edición 2015.
complex?
[2] Leiva, J. L., Guevara, A., Rossi, C., & Aguayo, A. (2014).
3. Do I think the system is easy to use? 5 5-1=4
Realidad aumentada y sistemas de recomendación grupales:
4. Do I think I would need technical 3 5-3=2 Una nueva perspectiva en sistemas de destinos
support to make use of the system? turísticos. Estudios y perspectivas en turismo, 23(1), 40-59.
5. Do I find the various functions of 4 4-1=3 [3] Beirman, D. (2003). Restoring tourism destinations in crisis: A
the system fairly well integrated? strategic marketing approach. CAUTHE 2003: Riding the
6. Is there too much inconsistency in 1 5-1=4 Wave of Tourism and Hospitality Research, 1146.
this system?
7. Do I think most people would learn 4 4-1=3 [4] SINCLAIR, P. M., & GARCÍA, C. D. O. (2016). Marketing
to use the system quickly? turístico 2. Ediciones Paraninfo, SA.
8. I found the system quite 3 5-3=2 [5] Molz, J. G. (2012). Travel connections: Tourism, technology,
uncomfortable to use? and togetherness in a mobile world. Routledge.
9. Have I found the system too 4 4-1=3 [6] Mowforth, M., & Munt, I. (2015). Tourism and sustainability:
cumbersome to use? Development, globalisation and new tourism in the third
10. Would I need to learn a lot of things 2 5-2=3 world. Routledge.
before I could manage the system?
Total 32 [7] Boullón, R. C. R. C. (1997). Planificación del espacio
turístico (No. 379.85). Trillas,.
The total number, as a result of the sum of the operation in each
question, results in 32. Based on this result the SUS score is [8] Brilha, J. (2016). Inventory and quantitative assessment of
calculated, which is expressed in (1). geosites and geodiversity sites: a review. Geoheritage, 8(2),
119-134.
SUS  t * f (1) [9] Maldonado, P. (2008). Descentralización del turismo en
Where t represents the sum of the values assigned to each Ecuador, el caso de los municipios de Ibarra y
question of the questionnaire and f the factor by which the total Manta (Master's thesis, Quito: FLACSO sede Ecuador).
sum will be multiplied. Replacing the values yields the following
[10] Bray, T. (2014). The javascript object notation (json) data
result.
interchange format.
SUS  2.5*32  80 [11] Wang, G. (2011, April). Improving data transmission in web
This result indicates that the app is in a development centered on applications via the translation between XML and JSON.
usability and offering an acceptable user experience, however, it In Communications and Mobile Computing (CMC), 2011
also indicates the opportunity for improvement in those questions Third International Conference on (pp. 182-185). IEEE.
where a total score of 90 can be achieved. [12] Yates, A., Beal, K., Keenan, S., McLaren, W., Pignatelli, M.,
Ritchie, G. R., ... & Flicek, P. (2014). The Ensembl REST
5. CONCLUSIONS API: ensembl data for any language. Bioinformatics, 31(1),
The compaction of technology, specifically in mobiles, has led to 143-145.
the use of its functionalities in different areas, by having
accelerometer, gyroscope, gps, compass, internet connection, [13] Qian, F., Ji, L., Han, B., & Gopalakrishnan, V. (2016,
standard msn, voice calls, etc. The same ones that can be used for October). Optimizing 360 video delivery over cellular
the purposes that the user wishes, in this specific case we have the networks. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on All Things
information collection of tourist places. The use of a Restful API Cellular: Operations, Applications and Challenges (pp. 1-6).
is a practical and easy-to-use tool for clients or devices of ACM.
different types (cell phones, pc's, raspberry's, robots) to use a [14] Kim, T. H. (2010). Weather condition double checking in
single communication channel to interact with each other. internet SCADA environment. WSEaS transactions on
systems and control, 5(8), 623.
Developing the app allows to see viewpoints that would otherwise
be housed in a text-only table. The convergence of images, text, [15] Sauro, J., & Lewis, J. R. (2011, May). When designing
georeferenced data, 3D terrain in a single environment in virtual usability questionnaires, does it hurt to be positive?
reality generates a better user experience than just displaying In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors
tables with text of each tourist point of the province of in Computing Systems (pp. 2215-2224). ACM.
Tungurahua. The interaction of the user with the app generates [16] Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of
immersion in digital content such as photos and videos in 360 attitudes. Archives of psychology.
giving the user the feeling of feeling inside the environment and at
the same time leaves him the curiosity to live in person what he
has just experienced.

267