Tourism research from various disciplines on tourists’ travel decision-making and destination choices commonly focuses either on the tourist or on specific destinations using case study approaches. The hypothesis that destination choice is a negotiation process between tourists’ needs and amenities offered by destinations is rarely applied in tourism research which impedes a better understanding of the complex interdependencies between tourist and destination during the destination choice process. This research project adds a geographic perspective to tourism research on travel decision-making and concentrates on the relevance of perceived travel risks during the destination choice process. Several quantitative surveys focusing on various aspects related to risk perception and destination choice were conducted in Munich, Germany over a four-year period of time. The results show that travel risks are relevant factors of the whole destination choice process with varying impacts depending on tourists’ travel interests, risk affinities or the objective risk level at the destination. Moreover, the results imply that the relationship between risk perception and destination choice is not static but dynamic since it is influenced by changes in the destination (e.g. increase in risk level) as well as in tourists’ needs (e.g. new family situation, altering self-confidence through increased travel experience).

The objective of this study is to investigate the inbound tourists’ behavior during a political event — Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. In late September 2014, the Umbrella Movement happened due to the demand of a genuine election of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in 2017 . Thousands of people started occupy a number of important streets in Hong Kong which, coincidentally, are the major tourist attractions. The concept of political events appears unrelated to tourism, however, the impacts on tourism reveals otherwise. Data of this study was collected in several locations of Umbrella Movement through questionnaires by convenience sampling method. The results showed that the inbound tourist behavior is indeed influenced by the Movement but the impacts are not as harmful as perceived. It is crucial for tourism geographers to understand the distinctive characteristics of political events in order to showcase how they interact on both of the destinations and tourists. Through the case in Hong Kong, this study aims at exploring the ‘real’ impact of political events from the inbound tourists’ perspective and offers some thoughts on its eventual implications.

The spatial distribution of tourism is uneven and therefore power law, a special case of which is the Zipf coefficient, may be relevant to the understanding of it. Although considered to be one of the most enduring empirical regularities in human geography, with a few exceptions, power law, has not been examined for its efficacy in the geography of tourism. This paper aims to empirically examine the Zipf coefficient hypothesis in the geographic dispersion of international visitors in Australia. The study finds strong evidence for power law (or similar) in the data of international visitor distribution in Australia, but the Zipf coefficient hypothesis is rejected. The findings suggest that each of the main inbound countries examined converge towards a specific power exponent. The exponent is relatively high for countries such as China, India, and Korea, whereas the exponent is substantially low for countries such as the UK, USA and Germany. Drawing from knowledge in extant tourism research literature, the study discusses some of the potential key processes that may explain such spatial patterns in the data. Implications for a country’s tourism policies aimed at greater geographic distribution of tourism are discussed as well as directions for future research.

Tourism spaces are no longer limited to physical locations and objects. Advances in technology have led to the creation of digital tourist spaces which can be considered representations of a physical location and/or object. This presentation explores the role and influence of technology in relation to these tourism spaces and movements between them. The presentation is based on data collected as part of a doctoral research project focusing on the Illawarra and Eurobodalla heritage and culture tourism industries along the south coast of NSW. These regions are both aiming to increase the use of technology within various tourism spaces. The data was collected through a document and website review, semi-structured interviews and observations. Initial findings indicate that from an industry perspective technology not only assists in communication and promotion of heritage and culture content, but also in preserving artefacts and increasing engagement and interaction with (potential) visitors. This engagement and interaction applies to both physical and digital tourism spaces. The increase of engagement and interaction includes integrating digital based objects, such as QR codes and web links, into the physical representations, blurring the distinction between the physical and digital spaces as well as movements between them.