Tracking Tourists

Abstract

Unlike previous texts that have focussed on migratory patterns of tourists and new mobilities in tourism, Tracking Tourists: Movement and mobility is the first text to address tourist movement in from a methodological angle in the post-digital era. It assesses how movement and migration has been recorded in the past, how it may be recorded and assessed now and the possibilities for exploring movement in the future.

Using international case studies that are both current and historical, it explores the range of options that exist for assessing tourists’ movement, along with the relative merits of each method. It will give a special focus to new technologies that facilitate our understanding of movement, such as the use of big data, hashtag scraping, Wi-Fi tracking, farming data from mobile phone towers and cutting-edge GPS tracking. It discusses the positive and negative consequences of the use of these new technologies and tackles issues such as ethical dilemmas and future trends and technology needs.