Visit Mexico and Chichen Itza

Visit Mexico and Chichen Itza. May saw several tourist related organisations entering SL. Here’s the latest – it’s part of a marketing push by Visit Mexico promoting Chichen Itza, an ancient site in Mexico. This landmark is currently in the running for the competition to name the new Seven Wonders of the World. Maybe we need to have a Seven Wonders of the Virtual World competition as well.

This project highlights the benefits of using a virtual world platform such as Second Life tactically as part of a tourism marketing project. The main feature, the pyramid has been constructed to a very high degree of accuracy. I’d never heard of this destination before, but now, I not only know about it, I can see it and even go inside it. That’s a key aspect is using metaverses for marketing – the ability to put people actually in the venue or destination. Organisations interested in learning more about virtual world tourism marketing can reqeust the K Zero case study ‘Tourism’ – here.

Commenting on the launch, Lopez Menu (CEO of the Mexican Tourist Board) was quoted as saying:

We are proud to share with the world this Mexican landmark and heritage. We are very excited to be promoting Chichen-Itza in this new medium, and encourage everyone to visit the site and cast their vote for Chichen-Itza as a new seven wonder,

And, not missing a trick here, voting kiosks are being placed around the venue and other high traffic areas in SL driving people to the voting website. Nice integration there.

The island features El Castillo, the main pyramid, the sacred sink hole (the Cenote) and several other themed areas. Additional media input is providing via an audio tour and streaming video.

Here’s the SLurl.

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