Empleo del GPS como base para analizar la secuencia de visita de los turistas

Abstract

The objective of this work is to study the tourists‘ behaviour patterns when they visit acultural destination, that is, we pretend to know which places are visited, how long the tourists are in each one and the order in which they make the visit. To do this, we analyse the route or visit sequence of a sample of tourists during the stay in the city of Granada. The methodology has been divided into two sections. On the one hand, in order to know the route followed by tourists, we used a mobile application connected with GPS technology. On the other hand, we analyzed visit sequence using Sequence Alignment, a methodology created for the research in biochemistry. This methodology is used to identify different behavioural patterns and help us to group tourists according to the similarities in the followed sequence. These types of methodologies are very important for destination managers, mainly in destinations or attractions with high affluence of visitors throughout the year. Sequence Alignment improves flows management, helps to know the areas of greater density of visitors and facilitates the decongestion of them. Destinations can use this knowledge to plan routes, schedules or improve tickets sales. In short, these results will be reflected in a more efficient management of the tourist attractions and in the improvement of the tourist experience.