• • Home
  • About
• • Research & Publications
  • Staff & Research Students
• • News & Events
  • Links
• • Contact Us

CeMoRe EXTRA Seminar 'Discussing and testing methodologies for tracking tourists in urban destinations’

Date: 18 July 2016 Time: 12.00 to 2.00pm

Venue: Bowland North SR01

In a mobile world (tourism included!), researchers, companies, public agencies are increasingly eager for data, in order they can plan and manage their business and duties. Having the “mobile methods� (Büscher et al, 2011) as potential answer to this challenge, what would be the role of technology particularly the ‘locative media’ (Firth, 2015)? Will the person-to-person methods die or we will be able to merge them with other tools? Definitely, the contemporary pitfall is to generate and intensively adjust mixed methods. Moreover, if funding is always a concern, in time of the so-called big data, is collect new data still necessary, instead of simply gather what is publicly available?

To discuss such issues in highly connected societies opens some perspectives. How about those contexts where the digitalization, though a high-speed phenomenon, is still in process? Another topic is: as researchers, will we indulge ourselves the “Big Brother� power, so usual in ITC companies?

In line with the consolidation of internet and ITC solutions "ever more available all over the world, these and many other questions emerged over the last twenty years. However, its outcomes are yet to be assessed and incorporated to tourism research frameworks. In fact, it seems that in tourism studies, conventional methods still rule the academic works. Even when technology is an emerging topic, seriously taken into consideration by groups of researchers and practitioners (digital marketing, Global Distribution Systems, social media analysis, etc.), its application for spatial analysis purposes is relatively rare.

Since 2014, a group of investigation is tackling some of these questions, in a very small scale, by collecting data in two different Brazilian destinations. The project “Territorial Dynamics of Tourist Flows in Urban Space�, funded by National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq), aims to develop, apply and assess a tracking methodology of tourist flows in urban contexts. With a humble budget, we employ mobile phones with sport apps and 3G internet. As visitors stroll within the destination, their routes are recorded, for further cartographic analysis. The rationale of this project follows similar experiences undertaken in Australia (Edwards et al, 2007).

Its scale is very limited not due to small budgets, but also because we are experimenting new tools and methods, whose operation is not precisely predictable. For now, however it is not possible to assume conclusive deductions, we are concerned in testing new spatial approaches in tourism research, particularly with the support of locative media "with special attention to its limits and future perspectives. For example, tracking tourists and their flows is one possible response, but it is not reasonable to neglect ethical concerns.

Strongly based in the social sciences, the new mobility paradigms tend to contribute with this process, since tourism is essentially a mobile phenomenon, not just a commercial one. By assuming that, this project seeks to improve the comprehension of human flows, with the perspective of a clearer understanding of “tourists’ spatial behavior� (Edwards & Griffin, 2013) in a context of “planetary urbanization� (Brenner & Schmid, 2011)

Contact:

Who can attend: Anyone

Further information

Associated staff: Monika Büscher

Organising departments and research centres: Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe), Mobilities.Lab, Sociology

Keywords: Mobilities, Tourism