Pillars of City Spatial Sensitivity and Their Integration into Sightseeing Routes

Abstract

Worldwide, many cities have appropriate and necessary conditions for the development of urban tourism. Some locations, although considered important for local tourist destinations as part of a standard repertoire, do not comply with modern standards. For tourism organisations, it is very important to plan the best possible sightseeing routes with the best sightseeing locations. Using the intuitive approach only, is not enough in the modern tourism industry. The focus of the presented research is an innovative approach to identify the most prosperous urban places that should be included in urban tourist offers. Empirical research was conducted, based on the analytical method of mental mapping. For the research location, Maribor city (Slovenia, eu) has been chosen. A sample of 200 respondents was taken. They were asked to draw a city map twice, once for the daytime city and once for the nighttime city. Graphical results obtained reflect a subjective mental spatial idea of individual thinking mode. Some locations in the city seem to be particularly important and visible. They were named ‘Pillars of Spatial Sensitivity’ or, pss locations. pss locations are extremely suitable to be integrated in a tourist offer as building blocks of sightseeing routes. When processing the research results, 34 pss locations were more or less frequently detected in Maribor city. 32 of them had different appearance frequency between day and night. Based on these results, it is possible to conclude that modified spatial circumstances affect the perception and utilisation of urban space. The research results make it obvious that spatial sensitivity of tourists depends on time. It is possible to design sightseeing routes adapted to the time component.

Keywords: urban tourism, pillars of spatial sensitivity, mental map, sightseeing location