Past, present and future of tourist tracking
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find out tourism movement patterns via the tracking of tourists with the help of positioning systems like GPS in the rural area of the Lake Constance destination in Germany. In doing so past, present and future of tourist tracking is illustrated. Design/methodology/approach The tracking is realized via common smartphones extended by an app, with dedicated sensors like position loggers and a survey. The three different approaches are applied in order to compare and cross check results (triangulation of data and methods) Findings Movement patterns turned out to be diverse and individualistic within the rural destination of Lake Constance and following an ants trail in sub destinations like the city of Constance. Repeat visitors and first time visitors alike always visit the bigger cities and main day trip destinations of the Lake. A possible prediction tool enables new avenues of governing tourism movement patterns. Research limitations/implications The tracking tech.