Analysing tourist mobility: current issues and future challenges

Abstract

Tourism statistics are generally based on data collected only at one point of the travel, which, depending on the perspective of interest, can be the originating region or the destination one. Indeed, many tourism trips imply the visit to more than a single destination, since tourists move to visit several attraction to several destination or within the same destination. The analysis of tourist mobility presents several issues which are related both to the collection of information on multidestination trip behaviour and to the analysis of complex information such as the ones related with tourist itineraries. The present work aims at reviewing the main issues related with the analysis of tourist mobility among several destinations and within the same destination to several attractions. The problems related with the collection of information and with their synthesis are explored by reviewing the main works in academic literature which face with these issues. Moreover,the potential given by the use of tracking technologies to collect information on tourist mobility are described and the main methodological approaches for the analysis of such complex data are introduced. More in particular, some analytical tools for the analysis of multidestination trips and of travel itineraries are critically analysed by providing examples of empirical applications on these topics. The final aim is to provide a set of problems related with the analysis of tourist mobility and of the practical solutions in relation to several specific research aims are provided by highlighting merits and pitfalls of each approach.