Exploring the Role of Location-Based Games in Managing Tourist Destinations Under Climate Change Challenges: A Gap Analysis Review

Global climate disruptions pose escalating threats to tourism networks, necessitating innovative resilience solutions tailored for regional interdependencies. This review examines research on location-based games for enhancing climate resilience across interconnected tourism economies. Analyzing 75 studies, strengths and limitations are delineated. While confirming augmented reality, virtual reality, and geo-tagging versatility for promotion, analysis, and experience enhancement, findings reveal gaps in leveraging these technologies for systemic coordination, participatory governance, embodied vulnerability assessment, and social learning. Immersive climate visualizations, policy simulations, and multiplayer interfaces emerge as frontiers enabling collaborative adaptation. The top priorities are (1) integrating localized climate projections with human perceptions through interactive visualizations to create tangible threats, (2) designing policy simulations for participatory governance of resilience investments across sectors, (3) developing embodied social learning vulnerability assessments highlighting differential exposures, and (4) designing multiplayer games to facilitate the co-creation of equitable, robust adaptation strategies by communities. Targeted research advancing location-based platforms to link science, policy, and community priorities is essential for tourism networks to navigate intensifying climate disruptions collaboratively. This review thus delineates critical next steps in utilizing geo-technologies’ participatory, experiential promise to inform and connect stakeholders in steering tourism toward resilient pathways.