An Open Source Web-Mapping System for Tourism Planning and Marketing

Core retail management functions include defining market areas and profiling customers. For tourism enterprises, market areas are geographically dispersed with many customers residing beyond the immediate area surrounding the attraction. Visualization and analysis of these distributed market areas are significantly enhanced by the capabilities of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and help to support management objectives. Unfortunately, many businesses are unable to utilize GIS due to its complexity and expense. This study develops a decision support tool for tourism planning and marketing that is customized and easy to use, employs open source software to reduce expense, and allows for broad accessibility via web delivery. Users can easily visualize and examine the spatial distribution of their own United States (US) client origins and visitation patterns along with relevant tourism-specific and general demographic information. This functionality can be beneficial in developing or augmenting business plans or marketing strategies, and for informing tourism theory.