In a virtual Irish pub in a corner of virtual Dublin, the discussion has turned to underwear and, more specifically, who in the room isn't wearing any. The theme is Irish, but the mood is cosmopolitan - and, in this pocket of the digital world of Second Life, nobody seems to be aware that they're sitting in the middle of an elaborate tourism promotion.
In Second Life - a place where people can frequently be found without underpants - nightclubs act as chat rooms with a visual twist. This particular establishment, a popular pub called the Blarney Stone, was set up by Tourism Ireland, but virtual-world ventures are starting to pop up at the behest of destinations around the world in a bid to attract real-life tourists.
In Second Life, the most popular free-form virtual world today, where more than 30,000 players regularly log on at once, netizens can visit an ersatz Amsterdam, a swath of Sweden, a hypothetical bit of Paris or a street in, say, Galveston, Tex. - all courtesy of local tourist boards.
Some of these neighbourhoods are bustling with visitors in avatar form; others are virtually windswept.
But are any of them actually turning virtual visitors into real-world tourists?
"Of all the different sectors that can use virtual worlds, tourism marketing is kind of in a sweet spot," says Nic Mitham, the founder of Kzero, a British consultancy that advises clients such as Finnish cellphone giant Nokia on marketing virtual worlds. "Virtual worlds have the ability to put someone in the venue itself."
Mitham points to the Mexican tourist board's replica of Chichen Itza in Second Life. The board built the attraction in part to promote its bid to have the ancient ruins added to the list of the New 7 Wonders of the World.
"I'd certainly never heard of Chichen Itza myself before entering Second Life," he says.
Elsewhere, the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions recently launched New Holland, a neighbourhood's worth of generically Dutch cityscape. Like other Second Life replicas, it's not a detailed recreation, just more of an impressionistic take: a few blocks of row houses, canals, clubs and a windmill.
But despite the scenery, the Van Goghs scanned and hung on walls, the promises of bike rides and free tulips, the place is empty. And in worlds like Second Life, where the big draw is chatting with other residents, when there's no one to talk to, there's nothing to do.
"This is the error that many marketers make in Second Life," says Ken Hudson, a new-media observer who heads up the Second Life campus of Loyalist College in Belleville, Ont. "They expect - like a website - you make it and it works for you."
Hudson says these simulations are more like showrooms and require full-time staff to succeed. "Without a guide or host, people are lost and feel worse about a place," he says.
But for every avatar in Second Life, there's a real person sitting at a computer somewhere. And if a virtual showroom needs to be staffed, someone will have to be paid.
Luckily for marketers, Second Life is full of people who are willing to work for virtual wages. It's common for players to hold down "Second Life jobs," paid in the world's own currency, at rates that seldom add up to more than a dollar an hour in the real world.
In Little Dublin, for instance, a hostess going under the name Starchild Renoir is busy bantering with guests and keeping an eye on the place. In real life, her name is Trish Roche, a 43-year-old social worker.
She acts as both a welcoming committee and bouncer, fostering conversation and ejecting visitors who disrupt the bar's amiable ebb and flow. Roche was a regular at the pub before she joined the staff. Community moderators like her are the first line of defence against disruptions that might turn a promotional effort into a PR nightmare.
