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Abstract:

Studying the geography of the tourist city aims at increasing our understanding of the patterns of interaction between spatial aspects of tourism in the inner city. The aim is not only to conceptualize the different ways tourism expresses itself spatially, but also to study the interaction between these different tourism-related aspects. It also aims at developing a methodology to quantify the different spatial aspects of tourism in an indicator set. We investigate whether modelling these different locational aspects and interactions using GIS and multivariate techniques can provide new fundamental insights about the mechanics of the tourist geography within an inner city. We also demonstrate how this insight into the urban tourism system can be applied in urban tourism policy and visitor management. As a basic ordering principle for the different thematic and spatial concepts of inner city tourism, a systems approach is used. This means that spatial reality is deconstructed into its essential elements and their properties. Interaction within the system environment is conceptualized, per element, by reserving a set of exogenous properties, influenced by forces exterior to the system. Also each element has attribute groups that indicate interaction with, or are influenced by, the other elements of the system. However, interaction, element and system can be interpreted both substantially and spatially. To account for this, a distinction is made between the tourism interaction system and the urban tourism system. In geography, place has a physical/material aspect, but also a symbolic and interpretative meaning. Place is produced and consumed by specific groups of actors, who are in their turn influenced by it. This double dyadic approach – place as physical and mental entity and actor as consumer and producer – can also be used to deconstruct the tourist place into its essential elements. The idea is also used, albeit not always in an explicit way, in some very important tourism models. In the “tourism attraction systems” model (Leiper, 1990), an attraction is seen as a strong interaction between nucleus, tourist and marker, which consists of physical locational elements, the tourist as an essential actor, but also symbolic/interpretative elements expressed in the informational marker aspect. What is missing in this model is that groups of actors are also involved in the production of this marker (narratives, interpretation of the place). This idea is present in the “tourism transformation model” (Dietvorst, 1995), where the material and symbolic assemblage of a place for tourism is accounted for, both by consumers and producers. The synthesis of those ideas and conceptualization within the systems approach, results in the tourist interaction system. The