Exploring tourism as a collaborative activity

While tourism presents considerable potential for the use of new mobile technologies, we currently have little understanding of how tourists organise their activities or of the problems they face. This paper discusses an ethnographic study of tourism focusing on its collaborative nature, and how this could be better supported with new technologies. Three types of collaboration are outlined: collaboration with travelling companions, collaboration with other tourists and collaboration with organisations. Each of these forms of collaboration has an important role when tourists organise their activities. There are also a number of key information resources that tourists use: maps, guidebooks, public displays and tourist information centres. With these resources the problem involves not just getting information, but using that information to decide what to do. These findings are currently being used to develop new tourist technologies.