Tourism Ireland focuses on viral effect of social gaming
National tourism agencies/ boards and destination marketing organisations are looking at new ways of engaging potential holidaymakers.
Be it for location-based social games or proximity marketing or online competition via check-ins, there is no dearth of campaigns.
Recently, Tourism Ireland said that it has become the first national tourism board to launch a social game, tapping into the huge popularity of games like FarmVille and CityVille.
The new game, Ireland Town, will be a part of Tourism Ireland’s Facebook pages.
The organisation highlighted that 24 percent of all people on the Internet in the US and Great Britain play social games at least once a week.
Mark Henry, Tourism Ireland’s central marketing director, said, “It is a unique promotional tool and a first, as no other national tourist board had done this before.
“For those fans who may be planning to visit in 2011, this is certainly a different way to research their holiday.”
In Ireland Town, Facebook fans are invited to create their own idyllic town in Ireland, with the help of ‘tour guide’ Sally.
They can then explore iconic sites and visitor attractions around the island, completing various challenges in order to progress to the next level of the game; these challenges reflect the huge variety of things to see and do on a holiday in Ireland.
There are 32 destinations and nine different tasks to be completed during each challenge. Fans can progress faster through the game if they sign up their Facebook friends to also join in.
For the fans who make it through all of the tasks, there is the chance to win a ‘real world’ prize of a holiday to Ireland.
Banking on the viral effect of social games, it is expected that up to 100,000 Facebook fans will sign up to play Ireland Town over the coming weeks.
Henry said, “Given that Tourism Ireland currently has a fan base of a quarter of a million people around the globe, and each of the fans has in turn an average of 130 friends, Tourism Ireland can potentially engage with 32.5 million people worldwide through our new Ireland Town game.”
Source: EyeforTravel
Ian Jarrett
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