Virtual Museums as a Way of Preserving Al Ahsa Heritage and Promoting It as a Tourist City

(Mahmoud Morsy Mohamed Garhy , Reham Mostafa Mohammed and Mohammed Keshar Kamel)

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Abstract

Museums have known throughout history as a human-heritage record and, moreover, a cultural, educational and recreational tourist attraction. Nowadays, as technological developments accelerate, virtual museums have emerged. They allow virtual tours to be available anywhere any time. The study aims to suggest a design model of a virtual museum for Al Ahsa that acts as a complementary heritage museum. This is because this city has become on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List 2018 and been announced as the capital of Arab tourism 2019. Through the analytical descriptive method, the study analysed the most important virtual museums; global, regional and local. It extracted the suitable criteria to collect Al-Ahsa heritage arts, which distributed between the national and private museums as well as popular areas. The virtual museum was designed by high-quality images and detailed information. The study concluded the extra value of Al Ahsa virtual museum by preserving the heritage, supporting awareness and promoting its heritage. The study recommended the completion of the museum publishing procedures in a formal website and the transformation of regular museums into virtual museums in line with the technological improvement. KEYWORDS world heritage, handicrafts, augmented reality, folklore, three dimensional, virtual tour.
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