City tourism – pedestrian orientation behaviour

This paper focuses on the orientation behaviour of pedestrian city tourists. It explores the importance of landmarks for pedestrian orientation and shows the results of a study conducted 2005/06 in Vienna. The hypothesis of the study is that better orientation and guiding systems will lead to more and longer trips on foot. Individual tourists combine public transport with long walking distances when exploring foreign cities. For individual tourists the optimal way to experience a foreign town is to walk through the city, having plenty of time to notice all the details in the cityscape and to choose from a variety of routes that offer different perspectives than the major tourist routes. The requirements of tourists concerning safety, security and cleanliness can be compared to the needs of all pedestrians but there requirements concerning orientation are more demanding. As city tourists usually spend only a few days in their holiday destination, it is apparently tedious to find their way solely with the help of maps. The disadvantages of orientation with maps include the need to identify street names, the mental effort to interpret a graphical representation and the different abilities in map reading. Tourist maps however already incorporate landmarks as 3D drawings of major buildings. Landmarks – being natural elements in human wayfinding strategies – are therefore more instrumental in supporting the navigation in unfamiliar environments. Their importance in human navigation is revealed in several studies [3] [4]. Landmarks are stationary, distinct and salient objects or places. The saliency of a landmark is a crucial characteristic: Objects or places which are remarkable can easily be recognized and remembered and help to simplify the navigational task. A study conducted 2005/06 in Vienna by the authors of the paper explores the navigation behaviour of tourists and points out, which elements are to be used in wayfinding instructions to enhance the vacation experience for individual tourists and increase the distance and number of walks. Some of the major questions of the study regard the tourist’s behaviour concerning the proceeding of planning day-trips, the landmarks being used for orientation and the route choice behaviour of tourists. This contribution focuses on the extent of landmark use and the categories of landmarks being used by tourists.