Role of geographical information systems in tourism decision making process: a review

Abstract

This paper presents a literature review of the application of the geographical information system (GIS) in tourism. Geographic information system is a tool to acquire, explore and analyse the geo-spatially distributed objects and their associated attribute information that can improve decision-making. This article critically analyses some of the recent papers published in reputed journals and gives a brief idea about many of the referred publications. Papers are also categorized according to the identified themes, and on the basis of the areas of the applications in tourism. The references have also been grouped region-wise and year-wise in order to track the growth of GIS applications in tourism. To help readers extract quick and meaningful information, the references are summarized in various tabular formats and charts. A total of 201 application papers are referred to in this paper, 53 of them are critically analysed. It is hoped that this work will provide a ready reference on GIS in tourism, and act as an informative summary kit for the researchers and practitioners for their future work.

The economic-administrative role of geographic information systems in rural tourism and exhaustive local community development in African marginalized communities

“…Impact evaluation and simulation are increasingly becoming an integral part of tourism development (Ramaano, 2021a). The earlier inferred is consonant with Singh (2015), who maintains that geographic information systems (GISs) got implemented in various fields such as forestry, urban development and planning, geography and environmental considerations.…”

Land suitability map and ecological carrying capacity for the recognition of touristic zones in the Kalat region, Iran: a multi-criteria analysis based on AHP and GIS

“…Most of the global researches have measured the tourism's capability through GIS-based multi-criteria methods (e.g., Aminu et al 2017;Batman and Demirel 2015;Gigović et al 2016). Based on an interview of articles published in the tourism field within 2004-2013, Singh (2015 has highlighted the utility of GIS, the combination of tourism resource, physical site selection, and ecotourism. She has also reported an increasing trend of GIS application in tourism studies of Iran.…”

Production Of Spatial Geosite Itinerary Maps as Tourism Destinations

“…Fagence (Boers & Cottrell, 2007) argues that the contribution of tourism maps so far lies in establishing the relevance of certain geographic concepts, such as spatial interactions between tourism components, distance information from origin to destination, transportation spots, tourist routes, and tour package maps. Natural disasters seriously impact tourism, so hazard mapping provides information to authorities/residents about various possible changes and disaster management activities at tourist sites (Singh, 2015). The availability of maps can be a tool for developing tourist destinations.…”