Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
2 Representing Tourist Movement and Constructing
Travel Paths
2.1 The Components and Process of Tourist Itinerary
Movement
Movement is controlled by human decisions that are invisible, random to a certain
extent, non-periodic and hence difficult to predict (Zhou and Golledge
2000
). Xia
(
2007
) defined human decision-making for movement as a subjective travel
existence. Tourists often make decisions prior to and during their itinerary. All in
all tourist behaviour in time and space is difficult to predict, or even describe.
These decisions reflect an ongoing process and changing desires, and are manifest
in behaviour that is related to the decisions and actions of the individual at any
time. A powerful and increasingly used way to represent these relationships is to
conceptualise the phenomenon with three closely associated dimensions: move-
ment in physical space, personal presence and episodes in time, and activity,
which may be linked closely to places, and the experiences and attraction of place.
For a tourist the actioned spatiotemporal choices eventually form a tourist itin-
erary. The artefact of an itinerary across space and time which emerges is a
timeline in the terms of Hägerstrand, a geometric entity, but it is potentially a
smart line, in which the geography it threads through and its owner's states of
activity are implicitly linked, and subject to rules of formation which stem from the
individual and the geography of their experience. This link both disciplines the line
and opens the way to assessing its internal consistency.
To illustrate aspects of a typical daily process, Fig.
2
illustrates the dynamic of
the creation of a Hägerstrand timeline as represented by decision making across a
tourist day. At the beginning of the day, a provisional schedule for travel and time
at attractions has been formulated (Fig.
2
a), probably strongly influenced by the
need for accommodation by the evening. The main preferred destinations may be
identified, as are secondary options. Dotted lines show the prisms where the party
could get to in their discretionary time between visits. There are also some
unknown attractions represented on the diagram as light green rectangles. One can
sense an intended structure and see various options for assembling the day. The
following two diagrams (Fig.
2
b and c) explore the sequential re-organization and
destruction of prisms as an unintended stop occurs due to a photo opportunity or a
call of nature. This reduces the duration of available time at one attraction.
Another stay gets extended, probably due to a high level of enjoyment, and one
missed because there is no longer enough time to spare if accommodation has to be
reached. An inescapable logic emerges and various attractions are chosen to be
visited, by-passed, or ignored depending on new commitments to earlier stops,
or new discoveries (Forer et al.
2007
). What is left is a continuous timeline,
a statement of the choice and activity of the tourist. We know that a real timeline
has to be physically possible and, there is flexibility in choice of what attractions
