Tourist hot spots in cities with the highest murder rates

Abstract

Social networks have facilitated access to the spatial location of user-generated images and this has permitted studies of the spatial distribution of tourist images. To date, however, most studies have tended to focus on European or North American cities. The current research focuses on an analysis of the behaviour of tourists in cities with other social, economic and cultural contexts. To be more precise, we analyse the cities of Los Cabos, Acapulco, Tijuana and La Paz (Mexico) and Natal and Fortaleza (Brazil). These cities share the condition of being both tourist hot spots and some of the cities with the highest murder rates in the world. The main objective of this work is to analyse the spatial concentration of images taken by tourists in contexts that have hitherto received little analysis in academic literature. The results show a clear spatial concentration of user-generated images, especially around the spaces that offer the highest levels of safety.

摘要：

社交网络有助于研究人员获取用户生成的图像的空间位置, 这使得研究旅游图像的空间分布成为可能。然而, 到目前为止, 大多数研究都集中在欧洲或北美城市。本研究侧重于分析其他社会、经济和文化背景下的城市游客的行为。更准确地说, 我们分析了墨西哥的洛斯卡沃斯、阿卡普尔科、蒂华纳和拉巴斯, 巴西的纳塔尔和福塔雷萨等城市。这些城市既是旅游热点区域, 又是世界上谋杀率极高的城市。这项工作的主要目的是分析在学术文献中很少被分析的谋杀率较高背景下游客拍摄的图像的空间集中度。结果表明, 用户生成的图像具有明显的空间集中性, 特别是在提供最高安全级别的空间周围。

KEYWORDS:

• Spatial analyst
• urban tourism
• user-generated images
• Instagram
• Mexico
• Brazil

Keywords:

• 关键词:空间分析
• 城市旅游
• 用户生成图像
• 照片墙
• 墨西哥
• 巴西

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Wagner Vinicius Amorim of the Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE), Fortaleza, for his collaboration with this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Fundings

This work was supported by the Spanish National Plan CSO2015-64643-R and by the Generalitat de Catalunya’s (2017SGR145). Travel to Fortaleza was made possible thanks to funding from the 2017 Santander Iberoamérica Research Grants.

Notes on contributor

Daniel Paül i Agustí has a Doctor in Geography and is a full-time professor at the Tourism degree of the Universitat de Lleida. His main lines of research address aspects related to the management of cities, especially those related to their images: marketing campaigns, management of specific events, creation of emblematic buildings. In recent years he has been focussing his work on the varying representations that different urban spaces can have on social networks.