The determination of potential locations for hotel and service facilities in relation to the transport system - logistic approach

Abstract

The existing space distribution of hotel and service facilities in different places in the world is mainly the result of natural organic growth. Such facilities were built in areas of actual and/or potential demand, provided adequate financial resources and land were available. Additionally, an important factor was also the availability of technical infrastructure, including, in particular, transport. Sometimes those facilities were built without any detailed spatial analysis of their locations. It can be concluded that planning of hotel and service facilities lacked clear and accurate methods as well as analytic tools. The main reason was the lack of relevant databases. Along the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), information tools started to be used in nearly every area. It should be noted that the development of the hotel and service base can be significantly promoted while using modern ICT solutions. In their article, the authors, among others, propose to use trip planning tools backed by Big Data. A trip planner can be used to collect data that help to determine the location of hotel and service facilities (e.g. hotels, guest houses, motels, leisure, recreation and restaurant facilities). The article presents the case study from the Upper Silesia conurbation, Poland. The use of Big Data allows to select locations of investment corresponding to actual tourist travel needs, especially that every year tourism becomes an increasingly important sector of the national economy in many countries.