The Development Concept of Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) as an Innovation to Improve Tourism Experience (Study Case in Denpasar City, Bali)

The evolution of technology has impacted many fields, especially in the tourism sector which has a positive trend every year in Indonesia. Enhancement of internet and mobile phone users is also one of the reasons why the sectors are digitalized, it also certainly opens opportunities for mobile app developers especially for the games category as the top global mobile apps ranked to explore tourism. Tourism has taken steps to use AR to enhance the tourism experience. Some studies also state that AR is an effective way to promote and deliver information to a broad audience compared to other technologies. However, the existing features are considered less attractive to attracting tourists and have not provided value-added more than just providing information. It has become a problem yet an opportunity to develop the concept of Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) in the tourism sector, especially in Denpasar's city case with low tourist visits. We propose a Design Thinking theory with a Text Mining approach to explore hidden information based on the user's perspective, and descriptive methods to find new design solutions based on their needs and desires. We find that lack of information is one that causes Denpasar's case. The majority (91%) of respondents stated that they would be interested in using Tourism MAR to enhance their experience, which the features can fulfill three realms of experiences; entertainment, aesthetic, and escapism with visual information as an additional aspect.