The Study of Tourist Movements in Tourist Historic Cities: A Comparative Analysis of the Applicability of Four Different Tools

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the application of four different tools (tourist card, questionarie, GPS and NFC) with the objective to study the movement of tourists in a tourist historic city (Popayán, Colombia). Given the need for these types of cities to manage tourism in a sustainable way, and considering that the management of tourist flows is a key aspect to achieve this, the aim was to find out which of the tools applied provides more precise data on the movement of tourists in the destination. For this, information was collected on the movement of tourists with four different tools, applying each tool in four different years (2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015) during the same time period (Holy Week). For the analysis of tourist movements, the Markov chain was obtained for each period. In order to study the generation of routes geo-location was used in each case. The results show that even though GPS technology provided more information on the visited places, NFC technology facilitates more extensive information. In addition, NFC technology allowed the extraction of important information about the places visited, showing a wide number of sites visited and, therefore, providing greater value for the study. Finally, the results of the study provide a better understanding of how destination management organizations could develop more suitable alternatives of the customer services systems, the delivery of tourist information and the identification of sites with heavy use. Conclusively, this study helps to identify how to take better advantage of the marketing strategies through different tools that analyses tourism movements.