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Happiness and subjective experiences receive growing attention in the business and economic literature as a central force that determines consumer satisfaction. This process is supported, to a great deal, by technological developments in the form of portable and ubiquitous information, communication, and location technologies. In this article, we argue that the interaction of tourists with the destination is becoming mediated through technological apparatuses and thus products that are being consumed are becoming increasingly personalized. We call for a paradigmatic shift in the analysis of tourist experience and destination competitiveness which should build on the following four elements: (1) utilizing advanced methodological tools that rely on mobile and sensor technologies, (2) adopting disaggregated research approach toward experiences, (3) employing high spatial resolution analysis to allow a precise investigation of content- and place-specific experiences, and (4) avoiding the traditional differentiation between destinations as suppliers of attractions and tourists as passive consumers.

At the end of 2014, over 93 percent of the world's population owned cellular phones, with penetration rates that exceeded 100 percent in most developed countries. Mobile phones have become an integ...

Advanced tracking technologies have facilitated the tracking of tourists' movement with high levels of spatial resolution, allowing for the exploration of factors that influence dispersal. However, the degree to which different analytical indices impact the results that they generate, remains under-researched. This study uses a high tempo-spatial resolution data set of location tracking information that was collected in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, using a mobile phone research application. It compares the results that emerge when four different analytical indicators are used to quantify tourist dispersal. The results improve understandings of the role that analytical indicators play in assessing dispersal, along with the underlying factors that influence tourists' dispersal at the state scale.

In this article we introduce the method of sequence alignment and its uses for creating tourist typologies based on temporal and spatial movements through a destination. The sequence alignment method was first developed in the 1980s by biochemists who wished to analyse DNA sequences; it was adapted for use in the social sciences towards the end of the 1990s. Unlike traditional quantitative methods, sequence alignment is concerned with the order (or sequence) of events. Thus, it is well suited for tourism research, as tourism involves the mobility of tourists through time and space. In this study, a database composed of 305 space-time sequences of visitors to Hong Kong was analysed. Data were obtained using global positioning system devices which were distributed among participants. The sequences were aligned using ClustalG, a sequence alignment computer program. The analysis resulted in the identification of various classifications of tourists in Hong Kong based on their time – space patterns. Keywords: tourist typologies, global positioning systems (GPS), sequence alignment methods (SAM), Hong Kong

This study uses global positioning systems (GPS) technology to compare and contrast the behaviour patterns of first-time and repeat visitors to Hong Kong. The use of GPS recorders, coupled with an analysis using Geographical Information System (GIS) software produces highly accurate, fine-grained information concerning the spatial and time–space patterns of the visitors. The study findings build on existing knowledge that first-timers tend to travel more widely throughout the destination while repeat visitors tend to confine their actions to a smaller number of locations. However, the data also revealed that first-timers and repeaters spend different amounts of time at the same attractions and visit during different times of the day. First-time visitors also tend to make one long, extended day trip from the hotel, while repeaters tend to make a number of shorter forays, returning to the hotel intermittently during the day.

A growing body of research is focusing on tourism in urban destinations. However, there has been no research examining the impact of hotel location on subsequent tourist behaviour. This article fills this gap both theoretically and empirically, through an analysis of the time-space activity of tourists staying at four hotels in different areas of Hong Kong. The movements of 557 tourists’ day-trips were tracked using GPS loggers. The study concluded that hotel location has a profound impact on tourist movements, with a large share of the total tourist time budget spent in the immediate vicinity of the hotel. Further, the study illustrated the impact of geomorphic barriers on tourist movements. The findings have important implications at both a destination and enterprise level.

In this article, we illustrate the importance of time in understanding theme park visitor activity patterns. The study that is described here made use of the GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to track and record the time–space trajectories of visitors at the PortAventura theme park in Catalonia, Spain. The findings suggest that visitors to theme parks do demonstrate distinct diurnal and intradiurnal mass behavior patterns or rhythms of activity. The investigation of temporal activity patterns holds two main advantages: the first is that compared with spatial activity patterns, it is more straightforward to aggregate, present, and compare temporal patterns; the second is that the external validity of temporal activity patterns is generally higher than that of spatial activity patterns. That is to say that temporal activity patterns are more likely to repeat themselves in other environments. Practical, theoretical, and methodological insights that can be relevant to both researchers and sit...