Quote from Michael Meallem on 16. June 2020, 11:35

They are planning the same thing for National Parks in Thailand....will limit the numbers per day and entry needs to be pre-booked....we are waiting to see how this works out

Quote from Harald A. Friedl on 11. March 2021, 15:58

Dear Mike, dear Adis, actually two of my students are researching about conditions to develop an app for mountain huts in order to prevent overtourism and overbooking over there. I will try to motivate them to write something about this here.

Quote from Anna Kodek on 11. March 2021, 20:43

I just know about apps for museen, or other crowded spots like the eiffel tower etc...

It is a good thing that they develop apps also to see how crowded is a hut in the mountains or the beach. I know that some tourist destinations are regulated by a max. number of people or you need a permit like "the wave" in Arizona U.S.A. or Fernanda de Noronha in Brasil.

How do you call the app, who regulates beach visitors at the baltic sea? Do you have a link?

Quote from Harald A. Friedl on 12. March 2021, 8:03

About the Baltic sea I found this article about an app to ragulate visitor management:

https://www.archyde.com/new-rules-for-visiting-the-beach-on-the-baltic-sea-planned/

"“You can register via the app that you want to go to a stretch of beach within a certain period of time,” the CDU politician told the “Tagesspiegel am Sonntag” about the plans for the booking system. “If there is still space, you log in and then have access authorization.” The community Scharbeutz on the Bay of Lübeck developed the system according to his information, now it could also be used by other places."

https://www.thelocal.de/20200618/from-beach-apps-to-day-trip-bans-the-planned-measures-for-german-seaside-visitors/

Further information: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11629-019-5965-y

Quote from Harald A. Friedl on 12. March 2021, 8:17

By the way, Miss Kodek, you may be interested in this post:

• Will we return to situations of the past or evolve towards new states? https://tourist.fh-joanneum.at/network/topic/destination-resilience-in-times-of-covid-19/

Quote from Natascha Dockal on 15. March 2021, 14:48

This reminds me of a talk on artificial intelligence and how to use it: the example was Bad Ischl in Austria's Salzkammergut region, which is expecting a huge influx of visitors in 2024 as the European Capital of Culture. With A1 Mobility Insights, visitor flows are already being measured anonymously using the A1 mobile network in order to understand and subsequently guide guest behavior. On the basis of this visitor flow measurement, a system is to be developed with which this can be managed. I remember that there was talk of real-time analyses that would enable the operator to decide whether to send his guests to attraction A or attraction B first - depending on where there is less traffic at the time. I find the idea very fascinating and I am curious to see how the mobile provider A1 works together with the tourism destination on the implementation, or whether we will soon find such systems more often. This would be a good idea for mountain tourism and nature tourism, but especially for city tourism and cultural tourism.

Quote from Harald A. Friedl on 16. March 2021, 13:00

Quote from Natascha Dockal on 15. March 2021, 14:48

This reminds me of a talk on artificial intelligence and how to use it: the example was Bad Ischl in Austria's Salzkammergut region, which is expecting a huge influx of visitors in 2024 as the European Capital of Culture. With A1 Mobility Insights, visitor flows are already being measured anonymously using the A1 mobile network in order to understand and subsequently guide guest behavior. On the basis of this visitor flow measurement, a system is to be developed with which this can be managed. I remember that there was talk of real-time analyses that would enable the operator to decide whether to send his guests to attraction A or attraction B first - depending on where there is less traffic at the time. I find the idea very fascinating and I am curious to see how the mobile provider A1 works together with the tourism destination on the implementation, or whether we will soon find such systems more often. This would be a good idea for mountain tourism and nature tourism, but especially for city tourism and cultural tourism.

Thanks for your contribution, Natascha. I actually hold a lecture on Ethics for Big Data Analyses where we discuss products and instruments analysing or progressing big data such as face recognition, observation, social media... which offers enourmously many chances for "mass management" which implicates - on the other side of the coin - also systematic observation and control, as it is practiced already in China:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/china-taking-digital-control-of-its-people-to-unprecedented-and-chilling-lengths

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/25/world/asia/china-freedoms-control.html

I am not sure if this is a very desirable, while efficiant visitor management...

Quote from Natascha Dockal on 17. March 2021, 10:14

Fascinating article - very sensitive topic... reminds me a bit of the novel 1984 by George Orwell - big brother is watching you. Definitely worth discussing with advantages and opportunities, but also risks. On the other hand, many people "voluntarily" reveal a lot about themselves through Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp... There is currently an exciting documentary on Netflix about this: The social media dilemma. The book by Manfred Spitzer "Die Smartphone Epidemie" (as far as I know, unfortunately only in German) is also recommended if you are interested in the topic of digitalization, but especially in the dangers behind it.

Quote from Harald A. Friedl on 18. March 2021, 8:48

Well, this is a big issue. Since this semester, I am teaching Big Data Ethics at the Institute for Data and Information Science at the FH JOANNEUM. Over all, it is a classic dilemma between two options which have both their advantages as well as costs and dangers... Big data analysis is certainly packed with pros and cons...

There is an interesting article about "Using big Data to Measure Tourist Sustainability": https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5641/pdf

Something very complex, so also very contradictive...