Toward a digital multi-media spatial tourism information system
Date
1994
Authors
Grant, Lesley Anne
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Abstract
Research reported in this study covers a methodological examination of official Canadian tourist maps, and a pilot survey of tourists. The purpose is to evaluate contemporary tourist mapping and to speculate on future tourism information delivery and needs.
The increasingly dynamic and competitive nature of the tourism industry is dictating the need for advanced information communication techniques to provide tourists with current information to assist in tourism destination decision making processes. A traditional and successful method of tourism information communication concerns the tourist map; for example, official provincial road maps are frequently used to assist in travel decision making.
Concurrent advances in digital mapping, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial decision support systems (SDSS), multi-media, and hyper-media have created ample opportunity for the tourism industry, geographers, and cartographers to advance the tourist map as a decision support tool. Therefore, it comes as a surprise to observe that there exists a paucity in the literature on tourist mapping; and the study of and potential for a digital cartographic tourism information system or a GIS-tourism information merger has been sorely under-realized to date.
This study explores the functional capabilities of contemporary GIS, SDSS, and multi-media to offer suggestions for the design of a cartography based tourism decision support database with basic and advanced query capabilities to assist in tourism decision making. The research reported here is a first step towards the design of a database for such a system and the identification of questions of potential interest to users.
This research concentrates on official provincial road maps frequently used by tourists for planning and tourism decision making. Moreover, specific surveys of provincial scale tourist mapping emphasize· the provinces of British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, Canada. Research into the design of a provincial digital map-based tourism and travel information system is conducted by:
• comparing and contrasting content and design for existing Canadian official provincial tourist maps to derive information with regard to content ·and design;
• surveying tourists to obtain a sense of their reaction to existing tourist maps and to derive a list of simple and complex queries tourists may wish to ask of a cartographic tourism database at the provincial scale;
• and evaluating contemporary GIS, SDSS and multimedia functional capabilities to answer simple and complex queries and to assist in tourism decision making at the provincial scale.
Research findings are considered in terms of their implications for provincial tourist mapping. The research yields a set of recommendations for a future digital tourism information system initiative. The thesis concludes with suggestions for further research dealing with tourist maps and tourism information systems.
Research reported here does not concern itself with questions of distribution of and technological access to innovative formats of tourism information delivery to tourists and tourism planners. Advances in electronic communications, digital home display systems, mobile digital information access and retrieval systems, digital networks, and personal computing are rapid, and their discussion would comprise materials for another study.