Landscape as a Basis for Tourist Mapping

Abstract

Tourist maps are typically developed based on general geographic maps enriched with thematic data related to tourism. This approach provides them with high situational accuracy, detail, and rich content. These features, highly desired by users, enable precise location and navigation. In the era of widespread access to GPS receivers and navigation systems, these properties are slowly losing their importance. At the same time, tourist maps developed this way lack much content that could be useful to tourists. Replacing the hypsometric base with a landscape base could enrich the map’s content and make it more useful for tourists, especially since landscape perception is a natural way for humans to interact with their surroundings. Developing an appropriate landscape base is a significant challenge, as users of tourist maps are typically those without professional knowledge of landscape. Therefore, landscapes depicted on a tourist map should reflect the common understanding of the term, not its scientific definitions, and the map itself should have an appropriately edited legend. This work presents only a concept – an attempt to find better solutions. The aim is to stimulate discussion on how to improve tourist maps, not to evaluate the presented concept, which we leave to cartographers and tourists.