GIS applications in tourism- a tool for sustainable tourismBy Pankaj Kumar, IIT Bombay

“Tourism carries a tremendous potential that must be acknowledged as essential for the future of world heritage, but without proper management, we can easily get out

of control”

By Bonnie Burnham

Decision-making in tourism development and planning is becoming increasingly complex as organisations and communities have to come to terms with the competing economic, social and environmental demands of sustainable development. In this area, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be regarded as providing a tool box of techniques and technologies of wide applicability to the achievement of sustainable tourism development. Spatial data can be used to explore conflicts, examine impacts and assist decision-making. GIS can play a role in impact assessment, auditing environmental conditions, examining the suitability of locations for proposed developments, identifying conflicting interests and modelling relationships. Systematic evaluation of environmental impact is often hindered by information deficiencies but GIS tools, for data integration, manipulation, visualisation and analysis, can reduce this hindrance.

What is Tourism?

"Tourism is a composite of activities, facilities, services and industries that deliver a travel experience, that is, transportation, accommodation, eating and drinking establishments, entertainment, recreation, historical and cultural experiences, destination attractions, shopping and other services available to travelers away from home."

What does tourism provide to the nation?

Tourism is one of the industries with the strongest effect on the economy, because it helps in developing other sectors. The World Travel & Tourism Council calculated that tourism generated 6.4 trillion (US$95 billion) or 6.6% of the nation's GDP in₹ 2012. It supported 39.5 million jobs, 7.7% of its total employment. The sector is predicted to grow at an average annual rate of 7.9% till 2023 making India the third fastest growing tourism destination over the next decade. India has a large medical tourism sector which is expected to grow at an estimated rate of 30% annually to reach about 95 billion (US$1.4 billion) by 2018. About 22.57 million tourists arrived₹ in India in 2014, compared to 19.95 million in 2013.

What is GIS?

GIS is a computer based powerful set of tools for collecting, storing, retrieving, mapping, analyzing, transforming and displaying spatial and non-spatial data from geographic world for a particular set of purposes that varies for each discipline.

Why Use GIS in Tourism?

Both GIS and tourism share a common characteristic, that is, both cross the boundaries of disciplines and application areas.

GIS has been applied in many fields including geography, forestry, Urban development and planning, and environmental studies.

Similarly, tourism has been a subject of interest to geographers, economists, business, environmental planners, anthropologists, and archaeologists. There has always been a direct relationship between tourism and cartography. Maps of travel routes and general information about the areas to visit are used in selecting the destination and in planning travel and stay.

Tourism Maps

GIS applications can provide three different types of information:

Tourism resource maps – Analyse the resource set to identify how much is available and where it is. To determine the capability of an area for the creation of new tourism products or services, identifying locations suitable to tourists or tourism.

Tourism use maps – To analyse the resource set to evaluate land use options and identify zones of conflict or complementarity’s, such as access points, water, wildlife habitats etc.

Tourism capability maps – To analyse the resource set to monitor tourist resources at risk due to management, planning decisions and other sectors.

GIS in Tourism Planning

In the tourism industry, GIS is used to provide:

A digital map base for printed maps Internet mapping by digital files Mobile mapping by digital files Attractions map Website with interactive mapping

Creation of Spatial Database

Tourism planning requires more spatial data collecting and processing, as all locations and their interrelations should be defined and analyzed within a spatial context.

Application Scenario

A thematic mapper can be used to integrate tourist information and GIS data to build tourist maps.

SVG can offer the possibility to turn layers on or off to create the representation which fits to the requirements of the user.

All the layers can be combined without restrictions to achieve the goal of the user.

Potential Benefits of Tourism GIS

GIS benefits organizations of all sizes and in almost every industry. There is a growing interest in and awareness of the economic and strategic value of GIS, in part because of more standards-based technology and greater awareness of the benefits demonstrated by GIS users.

• Cost savings resulting from greater efficiency: These are associated either with carrying out the mission (i.e., labor savings from automating or improving a workflow) or improvements in the mission itself.   A good case for both of these is

Sears, which implemented GIS in its logistics operations and has seen dramatic improvements.

• Better decision making: This typically has to do with making better decisions about location.  Common examples include real estate site selection, route/corridor selection, zoning, planning, conservation, natural resource extraction, etc.  People are beginning to realize that making the correct decision about a location is strategic to the success of an organization. 

• Improved communication: GIS-based maps and visualizations greatly assist in understanding situations and story-telling. They are a new language that improves communication between different teams, departments, disciplines, professional fields, organizations, and the public.

• Better geographic information recordkeeping: Many organizations have a primary responsibility of maintaining authoritative records about the status and change of geography (geographic accounting).  Cultural geography examples are zoning, population census, land ownership, and administrative boundaries.  Physical geography examples include forest inventories, biological inventories, environmental measurements, water flows, and a whole host of geographic accountings. 

• Managing geographically: In government and many large corporations, GIS is becoming essential to understand what is going on.  Senior administrators and executives at the highest levels of government use GIS information products to communicate.  These products provide a visual framework for conceptualizing, understanding, and prescribing action.  Examples include briefings about various geographic patterns and relationships including land use, crime, the environment, and defense/security situations.

Conclusion

• Successful implementation of GIS promotes importance of information over technology.

• GIS has been successfully used in tourism for collecting, analyzing, modelling and visual presentation of tourist data. GIS is also used for bring the dereferenced data (spatial and non-spatial) of geographic location into digital maps.

• The integration of tourism data and GIS data is still a big challenge for the tourism industry today.

References

1. http://gisandscience.com/2009/09/14/top-five-benefits-of-gis/ 2. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09669589908667333 3. https://dkrypted.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/gisintourism.pdf