The win­ner of CARIRI's Aug­ment­ed Re­al­i­ty/ Vir­tu­al Re­al­i­ty com­pe­ti­tion is invit­ing in­vestors to come on board with her.

On Fri­day CARIRI an­nounced Arielle du Ques­nay as the win­ner at a func­tion held at its Freeport In­no­va­tion Cen­tre.

Du Ques­nay got $40,000 in start­up cap­i­tal and $20,000 in equip­ment.

Du Ques­nay said her prod­uct is an AR gam­ing app that merges tourism, dig­i­tal and AR ad­ver­tis­ing to stir tourism de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing lo­cal­ly.

Du Ques­nay said she is look­ing for in­vestors who would share in the prof­its.

She said the app is sim­i­lar to Poke­mon Go and would al­low the user to col­lect dig­i­tal AR stars through­out T&T for which they would re­deem to col­lect prizes.

She said the app would earn mon­ey through AR ad­ver­tis­ing and would boost tourism in sev­er­al places in T&T where the app takes users.

Du Ques­nay, 30, a res­i­dent of Trinci­ty, said she start­ed three years ago and be­gan with des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing.

She said the idea for the app came to her dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down. Du Ques­nay said when CARIRI came up with the com­pe­ti­tion in No­vem­ber 2020 she im­me­di­ate­ly jumped to the chal­lenge.

Du Ques­nay was cho­sen from a field of 83 con­tes­tants.

In Oc­to­ber 2020 du Ques­nay won an­oth­er com­pe­ti­tion host­ed by Caribbean Piv­ot Move­ment when she sub­mit­ted yet an­oth­er app en­ti­tled Roam Caribbean.

Du Ques­nay is com­plet­ing her Mas­ter's De­gree in Tourism at the UWI, St Au­gus­tine and is the full-time cre­ative man­ag­er at Con­nect Me­dia Ad­ver­tis­ing.

Mean­while, Sen­a­tor Has­sel Bac­chus, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, told the gath­er­ing the world of AR/VR has be­come a sta­ple in many sec­tors be­cause of COVID.

Bac­chus said AR/VR is very im­por­tant to the tourism sec­tor which can add to the ed­u­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence for vis­i­tors.

He said AR/VR could be in­cor­po­rat­ed in Car­ni­val and any sec­tor.

“There is so much you can do,” he said.