Tourist Routes: A Time-Geographical Approach on German Car-Tourists in Sweden

ABSTRACT Tourism is often studied as if it was static. Yet, mobility constitutes an important part of the tourism system. The paper argues that tourists are travelling according to an individual travel rhythm, which can be defined as a travel pattern that tourists relate to, independent from the tourist sites that are visited. It was found out that there are long travel distances on the first and last day of the holiday, that mobility and stationariness are concentrated in time and that tourists along a round tour often spend the longest time in the region with the longest distance to the home region. The paper concludes that a travel rhythm exists, and that it is only partly influenced by the time the tourist spends at the destination, and the previous number of visits. Time geography was applied as underlying theory, and its use can be encouraged in forthcoming tourism studies.