From my experience playing Tour Operator, it was a challenge controlling and planning all the travel arrangements for my travellers. This has opened my views and understanding how difficult it all is in correlation to the real world industry this game is inspired from. From managing flights, accommodations, travellers needs and the cleanliness everything must be. Especially through the process of designing a package holiday which we had discussed in the lecture, from reviewing, researching and planning it, then leading to additional research, planning the product, then contracting the package holidays with the accommodations, and possibly airlines.
This all links to Leiper’s Geographic tourism system (1979). As the tour operator would need to think about tourist generating regions, eg British people wanting to go abroad. This would need to require transit region on how get to their desired destination, which may be through flights with airlines, taking the ferry from the ports or even via train like the Eurostar. This may require additional modes if it isn’t a direct travel, for instance a British person going to china, there must be a connection through France via a flight. With this linking to the game, if we needed to go to a destination further, we would need to use more fuel tokens, and ensure the transit is fine meeting with the needs of the passengers.
In relation to the tourist destination area; the main factors of pulling the tourst there would be through their interest. In the game our travellers had icons which related to their interests and they linked to the destination to see how many points we’d get, the higher the better as it pleases them. For example, if a person is interested in the forest, or nature Dubai wouldn’t be a good option, whereas Switzerland would be a good option due to the environment.
Hall, C. M. and Page, S. (2010) ‘The contribution of Neil Leiper to tourism studies’, Current Issues in Tourism, 13(4), pp. 299–309. doi: 10.1080/13683500.2010.482652.