GPS applied to Tourism
Starting this article, I will tell a brief personal story, which makes sense and contributes to the chosen theme.
In 1992, when I was 10 years old, I took my first trip to the coast of São Paulo. My parents and relatives planned this vacation 6 months in advance. I remember my uncle, the most experienced driver (reading with enthusiasm that map that came in Quatro Rodas Magazine), telling me that he had asked all his truck driver friends what the best route was to get to São Paulo, crossing the marginal highway and going down the mountain, always suspicious and expecting that some obstacle could make the journey difficult. Already on the trip, the most critical moment was when we arrived in São Paulo and entered the marginal highway, everything there was very poorly signposted with many detours. Finally, after a few hours, we got out of the trouble and managed to take the Imigrantes highway down the Serra do Mar until we arrived in Guarujá.
Thirty years ago, everything was more difficult when it came to traveling. Going to a larger city like São Paulo, for example, was a “seven-headed beast” for many people, as there was no digital reference for location, direction or movement, only through printed maps or brochures.
With the invention of GPS in the 70s-80s (only for military use) and its improvement (in 1992 - the first ones began to be installed in trucks for tracking valuable cargo), its release in Brazil, for civilian use, only occurred in the year 2000 and after being declared operational, after 20 years, this technology is so imperative that it is already part of a simple smartphone.
Tourism, one of the largest economic activities in the world, has benefited greatly from the use of technological resources such as GPS and systems that demonstrate tourist attractions, combined, without a doubt, with other technologies. Mobile phone applications are the most widely used tools to guide tourists along a route, leading them to their final destination.
GPS can be applied to tourism in several ways, such as in tourism planning and management, using geoprocessing and geotechnologies to analyze the potential, capacity and impacts of tourism in a region, in navigation and location of tourist attractions, to guide visitors in natural or urban areas, without the need for internet, as mentioned above, and also in formatting tourist itineraries, to create and follow personalized routes, based on the history, culture and nature of the destinations.
Raising awareness among public managers to use technology for tourism is an important challenge for the development of the sector, as it can bring benefits and create new business and innovation opportunities to explore new markets, segments and tourism products.
To achieve this, public managers must have a strategic and integrated vision of tourism, plan and organize the sector at its different levels, and invest in training, infrastructure and partnerships.