A Tourist Behavior Analysis Framework Guided by Geo-Information Tupu Theory and Its Application in Dengfeng City, China

Abstract

With the development of tourism and the change in urban functions, the analysis of the spatial pattern of urban tourist flows has become increasingly important. Existing studies have explored and analyzed tourist behavior well, using the appropriate digital footprint data and research methods. However, most studies have ignored internal mechanisms analysis and tourism decision making. This paper proposed a novel framework for tourist behavior analysis inspired by geo-information Tupu, including three modules of the spatiotemporal database, symptom, diagnosis, and implementation. The spatiotemporal database module is mainly used for data acquisition and data cleaning of the digital footprint of tourists. The symptom module is mainly used for revealing the spatial patterns and network structures of tourist flows. The diagnosis and implementation module is mainly used for internal mechanism analysis and tourism decision making under different tourist flow patterns. This paper applied the proposed research framework to Dengfeng City, China, using online travel diaries as the source of digital footprint data, to analyze its tourist behavior. The results were as follows: tourist flows of Dengfeng were unevenly distributed, thus forming an obvious core–periphery structure with intense internal competition and unbalanced power. The difference in tourism resources between its northern and southern areas remains a challenge for future tourism development in Dengfeng.

Keywords

• geo-information Tupu
• tourist flow
• digital footprint
• online travel diary
• social network analysis
• Dengfeng