Time and Space in Event Behaviour: Tracking Visitors by GPS

Abstract

Research on tourist mobility in combination with the tourists' experiences has been rare to date. Previous studies focusing on the activities of tourists in time and space have most often used the method of time-space diaries. However, an important flaw in this method is that these recordings depend on the respondents' personal observations and notes. This disadvantage is avoided by using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) devices, which record their carriers' movements directly, thus replacing personal notes. This new method was used to study the time-space movements of visitors during the Biathlon World Championships 2008 inÖstersund, Sweden. In addition to the GPS devices, questionnaires were used to study the tourists' movements and experiences. In trying to combine methods to support the event analysis, the aim of the study is to evaluate the practicability of GPS devices during an outdoor sports event. Movements and experiences in time and space are studied. In order to answer questions regarding the visitors' movements on a macro-level, these methods were combined with bird's-eye view photographs taken of the race arena every minute. The overall results of this study thereby contribute to our understanding of time-space movements. The questionnaires offer comprehensive background information about the participants and their experiences, although some modifications will have to be made in future studies. The information provided by the photographs substantially complements the itineraries collected by means of GPS.

The effect of minimum impact education on visitor spatial behavior in parks and protected areas: An experimental investigation using GPS-based tracking

“…GPS-based technology has been used to observe visitor spatial behavior in both frontcountry (visitors in vehicles traveling on park roads) and backcountry (hikers carrying GPS units) settings within parks and protected areas (Beeco and Hallo, 2014;D'Antonio et al, 2010;Hallo et al, 2005). It has also been used to track pedestrian travel in cities (Shoval, 2008;Shoval and Isaacson, 2006) and at outdoor sporting events (Pettersson and Zillinger, 2011). Comparison of data on visitor spatial behavior collected using different modalities (GPS tracking of visitors versus self-reported routes marked by visitors on a paper map) have revealed much greater accuracy of travel routes and more routes collected using GPS applications than with paper maps (Hallo et al, 2005).…”

“…Combined analysis of GPS tracking and survey data in which visitor responses to survey questions regarding on/off-trail behaviors are directly compared to observe on/off-trail behaviors could yield important information concerning linkages between observed (actual) visitor behavior and perceived (reported) visitor behavior. Existing literature indicates that perceived and actual visitor behaviors often differ substantially (D'Antonio et al, 2010;Hallo et al, 2005Hallo et al, , 2012Pettersson and Zillinger, 2011). Understanding how visitors perceive their behavior in relation to their actual behavior could inform the development and implementation of educational programming designed to not only minimize undesirable visitor behaviors (i.e.…”

El uso de GPS para el análisis del comportamiento espacio-temporal de los turistas. Pre-test en el Valle de Boí

“…La recogida sistemática de información permite automatizar los registros y crear modelos de comportamiento, siguiendo el modelo clásico de Hägerstrand (Hägers-trand, 1970). De hecho, empieza a ser una práctica recurrente en el mundo académico y, últimamente, está apareciendo un elevado número de estudios que analizan los patrones de movimiento de los turistas usando GPS (Shoval y Isaacson, 2006Chhetri y Arrowsmith, 2008;Tchetchick et al, 2009;Zillinger, 2010;Russo et al, 2010;Pettersson y Zillinger, 2011;Shoval et al, 2011;Mckercher et al, 2012;Orellana et al, 2012;Wolf et al, 2012;Hallo et al, 2012;Birenboim et al, 2013;Bauder, 2014;Grinberger et al, 2014), con el fin de recoger datos sobre su comportamiento espacial y temporal con resultados bastante acertados.…”

“…Así, una de las áreas más comunes es la de los espacios naturales (Chhetri y Arrowsmith, 2008;Orellana et al, 2012;Wolf et al, 2012;Hallo et al, 2012). También empiezan a aparecer estudios en parques temáticos y espacios lúdicos (Zillinger, 2010;Russo et al, 2010;Pettersson y Zillinger, 2011;Birenboim et al, 2013); en grandes ciudades como Hong Kong (Shoval et al, 2011;Mckercher et al, 2012;Grinberger et al, 2014), Freiburg (Bauder, 2014) o Sydney y Camberra (Edward et al, 2010); y finalmente, en centros históricos y ciudades monumentales (Tchetchick et al, 2009;Van der Spek, 2010). Destacan en esta última línea, por ser los primeros, especialmente los trabajos de Shoval y Isaacsson (2006 en Heidelberg, en el centro histórico de Jerusalén, Nazaret, Acre y la vieja Jaffa.…”

Comparison of methods for a landscape-scale assessment of the cultural ecosystem services associated with different habitats

“…These include use of field observations, selfregistration approaches, video cameras, GPS trackers, smartphones, social media derived information (e.g. twitter feeds) and thermal cameras (Deadman and Gimblett 1994;O'Connor et al 2005;Lau and McKercher 2006;Shoval and Isaacson 2007;Garthe 2010;Pettersson and Zillinger 2011;Birkin and Malleson 2012;Orellana et al 2012;Del Rosario et al 2015). Examples of the application of such methods include use of geo-spatial ankle transmitters on visitors to Twelve Apostles National Park in Victoria, Australia, to determine tourist behaviours (O'Connor et al 2005), and use of large GPS data sets to discover commonalties of visitor preferences in natural recreational areas (Orellana et al 2012).…”