2nd Reading Analysis in DMBA 401

Project Planning and Development

Towards Smarter Management of Overtourism in

Historic Centres Through Vistor-Flow Monitoring

0|Page
 I. Article Title: Towards Smarter Management of Overtourism in Historic
Centres Through Vistor-Flow Monitoring
II. Source:
This article was taken from www.mendeley.com

The article link is:

https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/da4e822f-441d-3438-
a16001e2138c698a/?
fbclid=IwAR2YbuWfA7pjSU0Sip1mcJe5Vzuq1X2PRjdn0nCi5B
FeD33p_dWBAfjMLak

APA Citation
Zubiaga, M., Izkara, J. L., Gandini, A., Alonso, I., & Saralegui,
U. (2019). Towards smarter management of overtourism in
historic centres through visitor-flow monitoring. Sustainability
(Switzerland), 11(24). https://doi.org/10.3390/SU11247254
III. Introduction

Historic centres plays an important role in our society. It gives us a glimpse of what
happened in the past. It is something that we give our appreciation to because there's a
significant event that happened in that certain place. Historic centres contributes a lot in
our tourism industry. As many people visit a place this leads to overcrowding which is
bad and should be avoided. To maintain a place beauty and sustainability, vistors should
be limited and there is also should be a minimum carrying capacity in the place. In this
study, we will tackle how this problem can be solve through the help our technology.
Systematically speaking, new ideas were made to better preserve our historic centres.
Here also, we can clearly understand how useful and helpful technology is.

IV. Summary

Historic centres are highly regarded destinations for watching and even participating in
diverse and unique forms of cultural expression. Cultural tourism, according to the
World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is an important and consolidated tourism sector
and its strong growth is expected to continue over the coming years. Tourism, the much
dreamt of redeemer for historic centres, also represents one of the main threats to
heritage conservation: visitors can dynamize an economy, yet the rapid growth of
tourism often has negative effects on both built heritage and the lives of local
inhabitants. Knowledge of occupancy levels and flows of visiting tourists is key to the
efficient management of tourism; the new technologies—the Internet of Things (IoT), big
data, and geographic information systems (GIS)—when combined in interconnected
networks represent a qualitative leap forward, compared to traditional methods of
estimating locations and flows. A methodology is described in this paper for the
management of tourism flows that is designed to promote sustainable tourism in historic
centres through intelligent support mechanisms. As part of the Smart Heritage City
(SHCITY) project, a collection system for visitors is developed. Following data collection
via monitoring equipment, the analysis of a set of quantitative indicators yields
information that can then be used to analyse visitor flows; enabling city managers to
make management decisions when the tourism-carrying capacity is exceeded and gives
way to overtourism.

V. Learning or Insights

With the development of technology, it is inevitably difficult to resist traveling or visiting

places. With just one click, a picture can reach a thousand or millions of people. I,
myself is guilty of that. Whenever I see a new interesting place to go, I would
immediately message my friends and convince them to go to the place. Thus, adding
myself as one of the thousands of mass tourists who wanted to explore and visit the

1|Page
place as well. Prior to studying tourism, I never thought that my desire and urge to visit
the place would create a big impact to its sustainability. This is really true. This
increases the risk of degradation of tourists sites especially to the places that
symbolizes our heritage and history. With the continuing renovation, and improvement
of historical places to increase foot traffic for profit purposes, it may affect the longetivity
of the infrastructure. This is why it is very important for a place to have a better and
smarter management especially in a highly visited historic centres. Sustainability is the
most important thing that historic centres should do. But visitors should also be aware of
how they can make a positive impact to the environment by visiting a place.

Furthermore, I have learned tourism flow marketing system is one of the ways on how
to monitor the flow of tourists in an area for more effective decision making and to avoid
unbalanced tourism in a site. This system would definitely help a site to retain its
sustainability. However, it is a matter of how much risks a manager would willing to take
and handle in implementing the said system. It simply doesn't end there, many
problems will occur in doing it but I believe it will be very successful in the end. It's not
just about the betterment of our historic centres but also for the vistors. They will be very
happy and satisfied while visiting if they see how organize and how improved the
historic centres that they wish to see. A well-organized system that will be surely enjoy
by many. And this would be a great memory that a visitor would remember forever.

VI. Implications

A. Education

By pursuing smarter management, people will become more aware in which way to
go. Furthermore, they will gain an inisight or knowledge on how to practice responsible
tourism. They'll became more educated in their surroundings. If the place they wanted
to visit is too crowded, they may change their destination and be responsible tourists.
This is not the common thing that are taught by our educators. But with the help of of
tourism flow marketing system, we can teach tourists to more aware and responsible of
their actions for the betterment of all. This innovation will be very helpful for a traveler
like me. I'll never get hassle from searching over the internet, what I only need to do is
to look in the app that is connected to the historic center that I wanted to go. All I need
to do is to learn how to use the app in that way I can be a better visitor.

B. Business

Proper implementation of smarter management would result in good business. It is

inevitably undeniable that the businesses in are will be successful and well-known for
they're having an excellent management. The better the management the clearer the
business will going to be. They can easily monitor the visitor-flows in their area thus
giving them a clear perspective of what they want and what they can do to improve
more the place. This will serves as an asset of the business. The system will help the
business to grow fruitfully and successfully.

C. Public Sector

Overcrowding in heritage sites can create conflict, chaos and different negative effects,
but with the help of tourism flow smart management system, these thing can be
avoided. With the help of public sector for the implementation of the system, the locals
and owners of businesses will mostly benefit from it. They don't need to worry about
having many people for there is a minumum carrying capacity in the place. If they
wanted to visit one of the historic centre, what they need to do is simply look in the app
and they'll find answer to it.

public services can be delivered at a higher quality and with

greater economic efficiency

2|Page
VII. Recommendations

The following recommendations are formulated specifically to the system

programmer and site managers/wbers based on the insights and implications conveyed
in the article. These recommendations will allow them to be successful in
implementation of the system, thus sustainability will be attained.

a. The historic centres should only be open to public weekdays so that

weekend will be time for its rest.The tourists can visit other uncrowded
places.
b. The monitoring team should make sure that adequate information will be
provided to tourists on how to properly navigate the app and use it on their
travels.
c. Attract investors or acquire funding from the management to successfully
adopt the new system.
d. Have a better public announcement so that tourists, locals and tourism
site/destination owners will be informed as well.

e. Create a viable time planning in the historic centre for the visitors to
identify what is the best time or schedule that they can visit based on the
maximum number of tourists that they can accommodate. This would
allow all tourists to book in advance if ever they wanted to go the place.

3|Page