Tourist flows and spatial behavior

It is important to understand tourist movements to gain a better idea of tourist behavior, the operationalization of motives, and how to better manage destinations. The study of movements, historically, has been inhibited by a number of pragmatic method challenges. As such, most research focused on modeling interdestination movement patterns. Recently, though, the development of Global Positioning System tracking devices and Geographic Information System software have overcome these limitations, providing the opportunity to examine movements at a much finer scale. As a result, the focus has shifted to intradestination movements or movements with in destination. This chapter reviews the historical development of movement studies, presents the core inter- and intradestination movement models and also discusses a range of intervening factors that can affect movements.