Novel digital tool and embedded learning approach for the use of augmented reality in rural tourism and related sectors

With an estimate share of 15% in the European tourism, the rural tourism sector occupies an important place in the economy and is a key driver of sustainable growth of many regions in EU Member States, where rural tourist activities represent a large potential source of employment and contribute to economic health, competitiveness, creativity and innovation. Staff qualifications, the ageing workforce and the inability to attract young workers and entrepreneurs are problems that need to be addressed in these industries. The Project Aurea4Rural tackled these issues by approaching to rural tourism through the use of ICT, namely Augmeted Reality (AR). AR superimposes virtual information on top of the real image, giving the user an augmented reality through a screen. Many European cities offer a tourism experience with AR, but there was nothing alike existing for rural tourism. Besides, AR solutions are very expensive for individual rural tourism SME-s to develop, as the businesses are often micro-businesses and have very limited resources. With the help of Aurea4Rural, a possibility was created for rural tourism providers, educational institutions teaching rural tourism, and any other interested stakeholders, to create AR projects. For this purpose, a special content management system, i.e. the Webtool, and a special App for Android were constructed. In the Webtool, one can create AR projects about its tourism offer, e.g. about the accommodation establishment, or any points of interest in the surroundings. The visitor who visits the particular tourism company, will receive information about this possibility (e.g. a list of its available AR projects) from the host. After downloading the Aurea4Rural App to his/her smartphone/tablet, the visitor can visualize the AR projects of the hosts from the screen of its device (after scanning a QR code or after reaching a certain geographical position, appointed by GPS). The Webtool and the App can also be used by students of educational institutions for learning purposes, to study how to create AR projects for rural tourism. The project also produced a set of learning resources to support the RT staff and students in this. Learning modules with self-test assessment questions are available on the e-learning platform, which was established as one result of the Project. RT providers and students can learn about AR, about creating AR projects and also specifically how to use the Aurea4Rural Webtool and the App.The project directly involved more than 500 participants, including stakeholders and experts participating in research, participants to public dedicated and/or significant events, participants involved in testing activities. More than 3000 micro enterprises from the rural tourism sector were reached with project's dissemination activities.One of the main impacts of the project is empowering the target group of small tourism businesses by providing them a free tool for creating their AR projects, which has the potential of creating a competitive advantage for them. An important impact is also providing tools for VET and other educational institutions to make their teaching offer in rural tourism more contemporary and appealing to students.