Tourism in Virtual Worlds: Means, Goals and Needs
Abstract
Nowadays, tourism is a very important business area. Using virtual worlds technologies, as a new means of information for potential tourists is a challenge where the actual means, goals and needs still need to be exactly identified. Within the Metaverse1 project, Innovalia Spain (in association with other partners from the consortium) has developed a new island in Second Life, which represents the hot spots of Gran Canary. This is a starting point of developments about tourism in virtual worlds, and a part of the related research activity. The INRIA Talaris team in France has developed multilingual tools, which intend to make the tourist's experience in a virtual world even more interesting. This paper aims to analyze why and how virtual worlds may become an important way for touristic areas to promote their services. We will also present the first prototypes of the multilingual tools which we have incorporated in the virtual area. This work is partially supported by the ITEA2 Metaverse1 (www.metaverse1.org) Project.