Phil Shellhammer, Eksplor’s Co-Founder & CEO, presented a special session this past weekend at the American Association of State & Local History (AASLH) 2021 Annual Meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas. The presentation, titled “Engaging Families thru Gamification”, provided attendees with an overview of the concepts of games and gamification incorporated into visitor tours at travel destinations. Many of the members of the AASLH represented museums and historical sites from around the United States.
Mr. Shellhammer provided the data and support to justify creating digital games as a method to engage visitors. Among other facts, the presentation showed the extensive number of digital gamers in the US (75% of the population), the wide age range of digital gamers (average age 35-44) and the importance of the mobile phone to most casual digital gamers. The group also spent time discussing the value that games have added to support education, and a deeper dive into the impacts to the brain when games are used to drive learning.
At the end of the presentation, Eksplor provided an overview of their recent launch of their “Headquarters”, found at HQ.eksplor.co. This new tool allows all travel destinations a chance to build their own digital trivia game and offer it to their visitors as an engagement and education mechanism. As presented during the session, a location that attempts to build their own digital game app could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, but with Eksplor’s solution, the initial building of the game and ongoing gameplay by visitors is completely free.
Eksplor is a start-up organization driven to help engage travel destinations engage visitors digitally, commercially and educationally. They are located in Springdale, AR. For more information, they can be contacted at support(at)eksplor.co