Guatemala drives tourism with AR campaign

Tourism makes up for 3 percent of Guatemala's GDP, according to a report by the World Travel and Tourism Council, a relatively small amount compared to other major tourist destinations such as St. Lucia and the Bahamas. The Tourism Board of Guatemala is looking to boost tourism with an experiential augmented reality campaign.

The board partnered with JCDecaux Airport Paris, a subsidiary of OOH advertiser JCDecaux, to deploy the AR campaign at the Paris CDG Airport. JCDecaux Airport Paris provided a display, which offered several images of Guatemalan tourist attractions such as the Mayan pyramids of Tikal.

The displays also featured social media tags and a Shazam logo, an app for identifying music, movies and TV shows. Users could scan the logo with their app to get an AR tour of Guatemala, according to a video by JCDecaux.

The app would zoom into a map of the country, which would feature several locations, such as the pyramids of Tikal and Guatemala City, the capital of the country.

JCDecaux has done several other deployments like this in the past as well, such as an augmented reality bus shelter that advertised the Russian version of the show, "The Bachelor," and an AR display featuring a virtual shark attack to promote the movie "The Meg."

JCDecaux Airport Paris also recently did a campaign with Ford to allow customers to check out the interior and specs of the Ford EccoSport SUV.

To see the Guatemala campaign in action, watch the video below.

Image via JCDecaux Airport Paris.