Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2 1
A critical tool for tourism geographies
C. Michael Hall
Introduction
All events happen somewhere at some time. Therefore, all tourism-related events can have
space and time coordinates attached to them (Dietvorst, 1995). In observational social and
environmental science, including geography, noting the place and time of individual events
and creating a database of observations is integral to research. Such information allows the
study of processes in different types of locations, which may provide insights into the inter-
relationships between structure and process (Goodchild and Janelle, 2004). Spatial data can
also be linked to other data sets, thereby potentially increasing explanatory power (Haining,
2003; Goodchild, 2010). As Kim
et al.
(2005: 273) concluded with respect to their study of
amenity-driven economic growth and development, ' “place in space” matters'. Nevertheless,
different traditions in tourism studies have different understandings of space and how it
should be studied. For example, even though Nepal (2009: 138) concludes that a spatial
approach is one of the hallmarks of contemporary tourism geography research, he also notes
that the full potential of spatial technologies 'in examining form and processes of touristic
development, travel fl ows and tourist movement, and tourism impacts, has not been realised
yet.' It is also perhaps signifi cant that while the
Blackwell Companion to Tourism
(Lew
et al.
,
2004), which was edited by geographers, included several review chapters with a signifi cant
spatial analysis component (Farsari and Prastacos, 2004; McKercher and Lew, 2004), the
equivalent
Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies
( Jamal and Robinson, 2008) provides no such
element, even though the
Handbook
offers 'a record of the fi eld's theoretical and methodo-
logical evolutions, emerging cultural critiques, sustainability challenges being addressed,
types of tourism that illustrate new theoretical insights and ethical criticisms, and hence a
window into the future possibilities awaiting tourism studies' ( Jamal and Robinson, 2008:
16). A review of the contribution of spatial analysis to tourism therefore potentially offers not
only insights into divergences in philosophical, theoretical and methodological emphasis in
tourism research but also future possibilities.
This chapter is divided into three main sections. The next section provides a defi nition of
spatial analysis and its scope, which includes spatial data analysis, spatial statistical analysis,
spatial modelling and spatial data manipulation, usually in a geographic information system
(GIS) (Kwan, 2000; Maguire
et al.
, 2005). However, despite its potential to contribute to
