Spatial analysis of tourist dispersal and mobility for tourism destination planning and development: A case study of great ocean road region, Australia

Abstract

Many studies encourage tourist destinations to consider dispersal and mobility as key strategic components of tourism planning and development. Essential aspects such as the visited destinations and the arrival as well as exit directions become a basis for formulating a tourism planning policy. However, research in examining this paradigm by using a spatial analysis is limited. Therefore, this paper introduces an analysis by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create a visualization of tourist dispersal and mobility. This methodology was implemented in the Great Ocean Road Region, an iconic regional destination in Australia that is experiencing limited tourist dispersal. Results from 351 questionnaires were processed by GIS with a web-based application. The data were processed by using certain tools, including ArcGIS ESRI to create spatial data as well as PHP and JavaScript programming languages to visualize the results. The results show that there is a low geographical dispersal in the region because the hinterland area remains untapped while the coastal area receives abundant of tourists. It is aggravated by limited tourist mobility due to the same directions of tourists’ arrival and exit. With GIS technology, the visualization of this spatial analysis shows a possible tourism pressure that is worth noted by policymakers in the planning and development process.