Visitor mobility in the city and the effects of travel preparation

Abstract

The rapid growth of urban tourism over the last decades has led to an increasing demand to develop sustainable strategies and measures that cope better with large numbers of visitors. A good knowledge of visitors’ spatial movement patterns is key to an efficient and successful destination management. Despite a considerable body of research focusing on visitors’ spatial behaviour and practices, the influence of visitors’ travel preparation has been widely neglected in tourism research on spatial behaviour and mobility practices. On the basis of a sample of 330 questionnaires and 162 GPS tracks, we explore mobility paths of same-day visitors in Freiburg, Germany. We show that well-prepared and not well-prepared visitors are two distinct types of tourists with specific mobility patterns. The former tend to carry out a wider range of activities, while the latter stroll through the inner city. Drawing upon the concept of motility, we discuss the implications for addressing information and recommendations to both types of visitors in order to channel their activities and mobility practices during their stay. Knowledge of these specific characteristics and mobility patterns allows tourism professionals to develop and offer target-oriented services which may help to avoid overcrowding effects by fostering a slight spatial deconcentration of visitor activities. In particular, online information services and signage can help to direct visitor activities of less-prepared visitors temporally and spatially.

Keywords:

• urban tourism
• same-day visitors
• spatial mobility
• tourist practices
• travel preparation
• GPS tracking
• Freiburg

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Bauder

Michael Bauder is a post-doctoral research associate at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg (Germany). His research interests are in the field of GIS and its implementation in the social sciences (especially human geography), mobility and tourism studies.

Tim Freytag

Tim Freytag is a professor of human geography at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg (Germany). His research foci and teaching interests include tourism and mobility research, social and cultural geography, geography of education, urban studies and metropolitan research.