Paper Type
Complete
Abstract
Gamification has emerged as an innovative motivational strategy widely adopted in tourism and hospitality for marketing, employee training, and co-created customer experiences. At the same time, the growing virtualization of the tourism industry through the metaverse expands opportunities to design immersive and meaningful experiences that extend and replicate physical travel encounters. Because gamification applies game mechanics such as rewards, challenges, and interactive storytelling to non-game contexts, it aligns naturally with metaverse platforms that evolved from immersive virtual environments like Roblox, Second Life, and Decentraland. As a socio-technological design intervention, gamification enhances metaverse tourism by fostering interaction, participation, and experiential value through rewarding engagement. This study aims to conceptualize a gamified metaverse-based tourist journey by evaluating best-practice case studies and proposing a practically relevant framework. The paper also outlines implications for tourism marketing and provides recommendations for future research to guide both scholars and industry practitioners.
Paper Number
1360
Recommended Citation
Gupta, Ayushi; Mameli, Elisa; Gupta, Hardik; and Behl, Abhishek, "Immersive Play, Real Impact: Gamification for Metaverse-based Tourism Marketing" (2026). AMCIS 2026 Proceedings. 12.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2026/conftheme/conftheme/12
Immersive Play, Real Impact: Gamification for Metaverse-based Tourism Marketing
Gamification has emerged as an innovative motivational strategy widely adopted in tourism and hospitality for marketing, employee training, and co-created customer experiences. At the same time, the growing virtualization of the tourism industry through the metaverse expands opportunities to design immersive and meaningful experiences that extend and replicate physical travel encounters. Because gamification applies game mechanics such as rewards, challenges, and interactive storytelling to non-game contexts, it aligns naturally with metaverse platforms that evolved from immersive virtual environments like Roblox, Second Life, and Decentraland. As a socio-technological design intervention, gamification enhances metaverse tourism by fostering interaction, participation, and experiential value through rewarding engagement. This study aims to conceptualize a gamified metaverse-based tourist journey by evaluating best-practice case studies and proposing a practically relevant framework. The paper also outlines implications for tourism marketing and provides recommendations for future research to guide both scholars and industry practitioners.
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