Supporting Tourism Policy and Planning With the Technological Tool of GIS Applications



Table of Contents

[Khaled Bayouim ]1

[Myrdoch University]1

1. Executive Summary3

2.Introduction4

2-1 Basic concept of GIS4

2-2 Definition of GIS5

2-3 GIS tools6

Online Mapping7

Analysis Tools7

Solution Tools8

2-4 capacity of GIS8

2-5 GIS application9

2.Tourism policy & planning11

3-1 tourism policy11

3-2 tourism planning12

3.GIS application in tourism planning13

4-1 GIS application in tourism planning15

4-2 Application of GIS in ecotourism planning18

4-3 application of GIS in tourism service management20

4-4 GIS use for monitor & control of tourism activity21

4-5 Application of GIS in tourism marketing22

4-6 provide information about tourist destination thought internet

4-7 GIS use as decision supporting tools in tourism research.23

5-6 Opportunities' and limitations of using GIS in tourism planning24

6-1 Opportunities25

6-2 Limitations26

7-1 Conclusion27

7-2 Recommendations28

Executive Summary

Geographical Information System (GIS) technology and tools provide the tourism sector with an efficient means of decision making and analysis of data. GIS is the information system which is capable of collecting, analyzing, storing, and presenting geographical data. As tourism is highly dependent on the geographical information, GIS has a high capability of supporting tourism activities, and hence improving the revenue generated by the tourism sector.

The project describes the basic concepts and tools of GIS such as online mapping, analysing tools, solution tools spatial data and data integrations, along with the major application areas and capacity of GIS. The GIS applications apply to wide range of disciplines such as education, health, travel and tourism, population and urban planning, natural resources and transportations.

The applications of GIS, on tourism activities are discussed such as tourism planning, ecotourism planning, and tourism service management, monitoring and controlling tourism activities, tourism marketing and tourism research. This project determines that GIS tools support all of these activities mainly due to their feature of spatial data analysis, and data integration.

In order to explain the applications of GIS to tourism industry, analysis of several case studies is included. Finally, project covers the various opportunities of GIS in tourism sector. For instance, It uses the resources effectively and supports tourism decision making, sustainable tourism planning, management, and development, and several limitations of applying GIS . For example, GIS tools cannot ensure fairness, compatibility and equity with the principles of sustainability GIS cannot do anything with policy makers because policy makers control decision making as discussed

Introduction

In today's age of competition and worsening economic conditions, tourism sector provides the countries with an excellent opportunity of generating revenue (Njeguš, 2007). This fact makes it essential for the governments, to pay enough attention and effort for developing effective tourism policies and strategies, in order to attract new tourists to their countries, and also to retain the old tourists.

To improve the revenue generation through tourism sector, it is essential to improve each of the tourism activities such as tourism planning, tourism marketing, tourism service management, etc. with the advancement of information and communication technologies, the integration of computer based technologies and tourism have provided the world with a new era of progress. GIS is an example of information system that is capable of collecting and analysing geographical data ...