The Role and Importance of Tourism Information System in Urban

TOURISM-ORIENTED APPLICATION AREAS OF GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Rhind (1990) categorized GIS applications with a structural approach, according to the frequently asked general questions. Bahaire and Elliott White (1999) divided them into the categories related to the main GIS functions and tourism applications (Table 1). The examples in the table show the range of tourism, recreation management, and planning applications by using tourism and GIS technology. Although there is an increase in the number of GIS applications in tourism, recreation management, and planning fields, GIS has many opportunities yet to be discovered (Boyd & Butler, 1996; Porter &

Tarrant, 2001; Farsari & Prastacos, 2004). Table 1. GIS capabilities and tourism applications (Rhind, 1990; Bahaire & Elliott-White, 1999; Farsari & Prastacos, 2004) Functional capabilities of GIS

Basic questions that can be investigated using GIS Examples of tourism applications

Data entry, storage, and

manipulation Location What is it? Tourism resource inventories

Map production Conditions Where is it? Identifying suitable locations for

development

Database integration and

management Trends What has changed? Measuring tourism impacts

Data queries and searches Routing Which is the best way? Visitor flows and management

Spatial analysis Pattern What is the pattern? Analyzing relationships

associated with resource use

Spatial modeling Modeling What if? Assessing potential impacts of

tourism development

Decision support

Tourism-oriented application areas of GIS are divided into six sections (Rhind, 1990; Bahaire & Elliott-

White, 1999):

 Tourism Resource Inventories: Tourism planning and management include a lot of tools and

information to help the complex decision-making process. In this way, GIS allows storing different data

sets not only qualitatively and quantitatively but also in the spatial and a spatial way (Yianna &

Poulicos 2005). The tourism resource inventory is important due to three reasons. Firstly, it aids

planners and resource managers in decision-making on natural resource capacities and forms the basis

for creating new services. Secondly, it may help planners with the use of the most suitable resources and

the factors affecting tourism. Thirdly, its long-term tendencies in the tourism industry can be used in

creating planning problems (Boyd & Butler, 1996).

 Location Suitability: GIS is used in order to decide on the area use and activities,

infrastructure opportunities, natural resources, and the potential capacity of a touristic destination.

Defining location directly or indirectly for tourism development correlates with many tourism examples.

Contrastive or supplementary area uses and activities, infrastructure condition and limiting natural

resources used to determine the present and potential capacity of a place in tourism destination are the

main geographic variables (Butler 1993; Bahire & Ellitt-White, 1990).

 Measuring and Monitoring Tourism Impacts: This application identified in Table 1 includes

following tendencies and answering the question of "What has changed?". It can be used to pre-

determine the potential effects related to the following categories by following demanded parameters in

time. GIS technology allows data integrity and management in sustainable tourism development

requiring environmental, social and economic information (Farsari & Prastacos, 2004).

 Visitor Flows and Management: This category includes answering to the question "Which is

the best way?" specified in Table 1. The application is mostly related to the time-space analysis in

tourism. It helps to understand and learn the behaviors of tourists and visitors (Dietvorst, 1995). GIS

enables the information flow in the subjects such as understanding the behaviors of tourists,

development of benefits such as economic gain, environment protection, activity management and a

better infrastructure (Farsari & Prastacos, 2004).

 Relationships Associated with Resource Use: An answer is searched to the question "What is

the pattern" specified in Table 1. In order to describe the formation and distribution of events, scientists,

planners, and decision-makers detect a sample. As a kind of tourism or development activity, GIS is

used to determine the areas that can be disturbed by any kind. As GIS, the effect analysis identifies the

usable examples related to this category, determines and assesses potential effects on tourism

development between different components (Bahaire & Elliott-White, 1999). Environmental

argumentation is a significant problem increasing in recent years in regard to the effect, cost and benefit

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distribution originated from tourism between various communities. Generally, environmental

argumentation increasing in undesired area uses such as pollution resources is found more effective in

low-income societies compared to the average rates. The use of GIS is strongly present in the

assessments of spatial character (Farsari & Prastacos, 2004).

 Assessing Potential Impacts of Tourism Development: This application includes the

implementations processing more complex analytic characteristics of GIS and combining all features of

GIS. It also searches for a response to the question "What if?". The visual effect analysis combines

particularly a few tourism planning projects for an environment or scenery with high aesthetical values

(Millar et al., 1994; Yianna & Poulicos, 2005).

TOURISM INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Tourism Information Systems (TIS) are evaluated as a type of information systems basically

including the concepts of tourist, urban people, local administrations, businesses, technological

environment, political environment, social environment, economic environment and ecological

environment (Figure 2) (Çuhadar, 2010; Njegus, 2013; Etravelweek, 2016) .

Figure 2. Cycle in tourism information systems (Etravelweek, 2016)

In general, TISs can be defined as computer-aided systems through which tourists can access the

information they search simply and fast. TISs provide information for tourists on information,

accommodation, transportation, destination and other services. The interface of TIS forms the map or

city plan of a tourism region. In accordance with the purposes of tourists and tourism (politic, economic,

social and technological), information such as historical places, national parks, transportation routes,

lakes, etc. takes place on this map or plan. As maps are the mediators of visual information presenting

for tourists, the unlocational information for tourism must be relevant to the location information. The

system includes storage, processing, analysis of these data and their submission to users by updating

them (Figure 2). Questioning and analyses to be made in TIS depend on the information scope of the

system and analysis abilities. The scope of information is determined at the design stage according to

the user group of the system. These data need to be in the database and regularly updated (Cömert &

Bostancı, 1999; Çelik, 2005; Çuhadar, 2010; Njegus, 2013). With these systems, it is aimed to manage

the fields related to tourism, decide on planning for the future and ensure coherence with GISs

established at the following stage (Esen, 2005).

It is useful to set up Tourism Information System so as to provide an information resource for

tourists in cities, present a province, region, and country and create a basis for the infrastructure for

Geographic Information System based works. By this means, tourists coming to a city can easily learn

where and what opportunities they will have, how they will reach somewhere in the shortest way and

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which places in the city are worth seeing. Locational and unlocational data necessary to form an

infrastructure of TIS in the landscape planning process must be collected and stored in a healthy way.

CONCLUSIONS

Nowadays, tourism is a very fast growing sector. In recent years, information technology is used in

every area of life, it is influential in the establishment of the tourism potential of the city. This offers

new opportunities for tourists visiting the city. The most effective solution for storing comprehensive

information about tourism, geographic information system based on the creation of a special

information system.

Landscape planners analyze the landscape by using natural, cultural, social and economic data and

assess the results. For this purpose, Geographic Information Systems related to many occupational

disciplines are utilized to get fast and correct information in the landscape planning process, prevent

unnecessary data repetitions and make rationalist decisions. GIS is an important tool in the application

of inventory, analysis, and assessment processes to landscape values and resources in landscape

planning. In this process, tourism planning also has a significant place among the spheres of influence

of GIS. "Tourism Information System (TIS)" created for sustainable city tourism planning in the GIS

environment has a significant power in terms of tourism development, increasing effects of tourism

properties, providing economically more meaningful results and preparation of tourism-purposed

implementation development plans in tourism planning. Tourism Information Systems can be integrated

with the information systems set up for cities for other purposes.

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