An assessment of the usefulness of spatial agricultural land resource digital data for agritourism and ecotourism

[摘要] The study broadly assesses the usefulness of available digital spatial land resource data as a sourcefor agritourism and ecotourism information by comparing the inventory of available spatial data setsfor South Africa and the SADC region, with the needs for spatial data as derived from a literaturestudy of travel motivations and demand determinants.Spatial land resource data have been collected, processed and stored for agricultural planningpurposes, like land suitability assessment, agricultural production and infrastructural planning.Given a) the growth in agritourism and ecotourism, b) the more detailed information required bytourists to aid them during decision making processes like destination selection and c) the progressin information technology rendering access of information via the internet easier; the question arosewhether the available land resource digital data can be processed to provide relevant tourisminformation on internet websites. Four tasks had to be done, namely: a) identifying tourists' needsby means of a literature study on travel motivations and demand determinants; b) identifying theland resource data sets that could be processed into information to meet these identified needs; c)determining the accessibility of spatial information on internet tourism websites to potentialagritourists and ecotourists, and d) exploring opportunities for adding value by looking at whatinformation existing websites are offering in comparison with what can be obtained fromrepackaging the land resource data.Common ground was found between the spatial tourist information needs and the available spatialland resource data. This, coupled with the ability of combining meteorological and other humanmadeenvironmental data in GIS modelling, suggests that repackaging land resource data seems tohave the potential to offer useful tourism information in correspondence with confirmed touristinformation needs.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University