Alternative methodological approaches in understanding tourist spatial behavior in urban heritage destination

Abstract

The complexities of cities as spaces lead to the difficulties in understanding the spatial behavior of tourists within cities. Mapping and modelling of tourists’ spatial activity is viewed by many researchers as an under researched field in which much progress is still needed. The advancement of tracking technologies development offers an opportunity to further and expand the nature of understanding the tourist particularly in urban destination. Understanding of this phenomenon may also allow planners and tourism managers to make decisions and to address tourism development in a well-versed manner. The rapid advancement and availability of small, cheap and reliable tracking devices drawing on GPS technology is assisting researchers to develop new methods of spatial research. From this point of view, tourism is mainly a geographic activity. Most of the information needed in tourism planning is spatial, indicating where and how extensive the tourism resources are, how intensively the resources are used and so on. Basically, different methods can be employed to utilize the collected spatial data. However, the most basic method is to present the collected information on a map. The tracks collected from tourists using advanced tracking technologies can be further used to calculate many different variables that describe the spatial activity of tourist particularly in urban destination. This paper aims to capture the new methodological approaches which can help to explain different modes of behavior in urban destination versus traditional approaches. In this context, advanced tracking technologies were seen as the best tool in order to give both actual and detailed insight into people’s individual and collective travel behavior.