Malin Zillinger

Time and Space in Event Behaviour: Tracking Visitors by GPS

Abstract Research on tourist mobility in combination with the tourists’ experiences has been rare to date. Previous studies focusing on the activities of tourists in time and space have most often used the method of time–space diaries. However, an important flaw in this method is that these recordings depend on the respondents’ personal observations and notes. This disadvantage is avoided by using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) devices, which record their carriers’ movements directly, thus replacing personal notes. This new method was used to study the time–space movements of visitors during the Biathlon World Championships 2008 in Östersund, Sweden. In addition to the GPS devices, questionnaires were used to study the tourists’ movements and experiences. In trying to combine methods to support the event analysis, the aim of the study is to evaluate the practicability of GPS devices during an outdoor sports event. Movements and experiences in time and space are studied. In order to answer questions regarding the visitors’ movements on a macro-level, these methods were combined with birds-eye view photographs taken of the race arena every minute. The overall results of this study thereby contribute to our understanding of time–space movements. The questionnaires offer comprehensive background information about the participants and their experiences, although some modifications will have to be made in future studies. The information provided by the photographs substantially complements the itineraries collected by means of GPS.

Guided Tours and Tourism

Guided tours can be found at more or less all places where tourism exists. Many people’s first thought of guided tours is that of a herd of people, following a woman with a yellow umbrella; this is not always a positively afflicted image of this phenomenon. Guided tours have been both stereotyped and ridiculed in everyday talk, being considered as a highly choreographed action. However, it is also an activity which most people have taken part in, thereby experiencing new places (Widtfeldt Meged, 2010). In tourism research, guided tours have hitherto not received the attention we believe they deserve. We will show that research on guiding exists, among others the classics of Boorstin (1977), Holloway (1981) and Cohen (1985), but that the academic field is far from well-studied. In this special issue, therefore, we aim to discuss guided tours as a highly essential phenomenon in the field of tourism. Guided tours are multi-facetted, situatedly designed and continuously developed in order to meet needs from new audiences around the world. From this, it could be concluded that the importance of guided tours is continuously growing, as tourism becomes more and more a globalized phenomenon. As early as 1979, Schmidt stated that there are four functions of guided tours. Firstly, tourists do not have to choose themselves which sites to visit on occasions when time is limited. Secondly, travelling in a group with accordingly different positions, guided tours can act as a compromise for the individual group members. Thirdly, tourism can be legitimized by the educational contribution that a guided tour would bring and last, it is a safe way to get to know a new place. No matter if tourists are visiting urban or rural areas, if they are travelling alone or in company, if they visit the nearest museum or a low-accessible place in another continent, guided tours are offered in most places, in different shapes and to different visitors.

Disruptive Network Innovation in Free Guided Tours

ABSTRACT This article provides an analysis on how disruptive innovation is spurred by the dynamics of digital and analogue networks in the sharing economy. The analysis builds on a free guided-tour company in Copenhagen. Data is collected in a bottom-up reiterative process, drawing on theories on disruptive innovation and network theory. Between 2013 and 2016, one of the free tour companies in Copenhagen was followed by means of participant observations, interviews with tour guides and interpretation of online documents. Results show that free guided tours based on tips alone and orchestrated within the frame of the sharing economy are not merely a product innovation. More importantly, they entail disruptive market innovations that circumvent traditional industry structures and ultimately produce disruptive organizational innovations where trust in network is the crux. Free guided-tour companies operate as communitarian organizations in extractive business models, and they are game changers in the field of guided tours, and ultimately in the field of tourism.

Networks as premises for innovations in guided tours

ABSTRACT This article provides an analysis on how disruptive innovation is spurred by the dynamics of digital and analogue networks in the sharing economy. The analysis builds on a free guided-tour company in Copenhagen. Data is collected in a bottom-up reiterative process, drawing on theories on disruptive innovation and network theory. Between 2013 and 2016, one of the free tour companies in Copenhagen was followed by means of participant observations, interviews with tour guides and interpretation of online documents. Results show that free guided tours based on tips alone and orchestrated within the frame of the sharing economy are not merely a product innovation. More importantly, they entail disruptive market innovations that circumvent traditional industry structures and ultimately produce disruptive organizational innovations where trust in network is the crux. Free guided-tour companies operate as communitarian organizations in extractive business models, and they are game changers in the field of guided tours, and ultimately in the field of tourism.