The changing nature of city tourism and its possible implications for the future of cities
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The changing nature of city tourism and its possible implications for the future of cities Kerstin Bock 1
Received: 31 October 2015 / Accepted: 25 November 2015 / Published online: 12 December 2015 # The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract City tourism is one of the fastest growing travel segments worldwide [18] and the changing nature of city tourism becomes increasingly apparent in many cities. Facilitated by mobile access to information, tourists are increasingly seeking, finding and consuming ‘local experiences’ and the boundaries between tourists and residents become increasingly blurred. While the impact of the proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the travel industry as well as on tourist behaviour and the travel experience has been widely acknowledged (Egger J Hosp Tour Technol 4(2): 119–133, 2013), (McCabe et al. Tour Manage Perspect 4: 36–44, 2012), (Stamboulis and Skayannis Tour Manage 24: 35–43, 2003), [35, 40], (Ye et al. Comput Hum Behav 27: 634–639, 2011), the implications of this new type of tourism for future urban development have received little attention (Füller and Michel Int J Urban Regional 38(4): 1304–1318, 2014). This paper aims to better understand the underlying causes of the changing nature of city tourism and how this change could impact the future development of cities. It is argued that in addition to the proliferation of ICTs, the phenomena of experiential travel and social acceleration have contributed to the rise in popularity of city tourism as well as to a change in tourist behaviour. Possible implications for the future development of cities resulting from this new type of tourism, as well as approaches to solving those challenges, are discussed. It becomes clear that an interdisciplinary approach will be required in order to fully understand the challenges posed by city tourism as well as to develop and
* Kerstin Bock [email protected] 1
Department of Futures Research, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
implement strategies for a successful integration of tourism into future urban development. Keywords City tourism . Tourist behaviour . Experiential travel . Social acceleration . Information and communication technologies (ICTs) . Urban development
Introduction Although cities and their development have without doubt been increasingly shaped by tourism in the past decades, discussions of the links between city tourism and its impact on a city’s development remain scarce. City tourism is one of the fastest growing travel segments worldwide [18] and the impacts of the changing nature of city tourism become increasingly apparent in many cities. The proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has had a significant impact on the travel industry, as well as on tourist behaviour, and is also transforming the nature of travel and the actual tourist experience [9, 22]. While the general impact of ICTs on t
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