Acknowledging the tourist spatial behavior for space management in urban heritage destination

Abstract

How tourists consume spatial activities within a destination at micro level such as urban spaces might reveal the level of motivation among tourists, and arguably critical to be understood for efficiency in space and urban planning management. Due to the large concentration of movement throughout the urban centers, the spatial activities generated by the tourist nowadays were seen as influential forces in shaping the city function. Inaccurate information of their movement may lead into problematic city space management for city planner through incompatible facilities and activities in the tourism destination. Thus, extended perspective as to how tourists consume the destination is critical in understanding tourist motivation and behavior in terms of spatial behavior. In order to comprehensively recognize tourist spatial behavior, there is a need to integrate space (spatial data) with psychological and sociological aspects (non-spatial data). Integrating these two aspects potentially allows the researcher to portray spatial activities generate by tourist at different spaces and times. For this purpose, Melaka City is selected as a case study. It is a well-known as heritage tourist destination and received a large number of tourist arrival as well as movement within its World Heritage Site (WHS) boundaries. An analysis of 128 respondents on on-going survey was conducted in order to acknowledge this understanding of tourist spatial behavior using comparative techniques of traditional and advanced tracking methods to acquire the data. A preliminary finding reveals various variables describing the spatial activity of tourist relevant to tourist space consumption, and therefore their motivation through tourist spatial behavior.