The Influence of Technology on Geographic Cognition and Tourism Experience

Tourists today have access to retrieve voluminous geographic information about destinations while travelling as various context-aware geographic technologies have become increasingly ubiquitous. These technologies are suggested to aid tourists in the process of destination consumption to gain meaningful tourism experiences. This study found that people using different types of technologies for everyday routine perceive that these technologies help them with spatial inference to acquire geographic information; making sense of direction and orientation, and interacting with and within places. Further, within the travel context, geographic technology was found to influence the dimensions of sensory, affective and social experience, as well as the cognitive and bodily experience. The type of technology used for travel was also found to be a significant predictor of the sensory, affective, and social dimensions of tourism experience.