Exploring the use of geovisualisation in tourism education : The case of teaching a service management course

Abstract

The development and adoption of geoapplications are currently booming due to the Internet advances in geovisualisation, the democratisation of geodata and the fact that more than 80% of the information has geospatial references. The tourism industry is a major user of geoapplications, as (geo)-information is the lifeblood of tourism. Although numerous studies investigate the impact of geovisualisation and digital maps on business operations, very few studies have examined the use and impact of geovisualisation on education. After reviewing the literature, this paper addresses this gap by developing an instructional model that shows how to exploit and integrate geovisualisation in teaching methods for enhancing the educational benefits. The applicability and the educational benefits of the model were tested by implementing an experiment that involved the use of geovisualisation for teaching a tourism service management topic. Findings provided evidence of the learner-generated drawing effects of geovisualisation, but not of the geovisualisation provision effects. However, the latter effects were found as a conditional provision of the materialisation of the former effects. The paper concludes by discussing the future trends and challenges for fully exploiting and integrating geovisualisation in tourism education.