Towards Smarter Management of Overtourism in Historic Centres Through Visitor-Flow Monitoring

Historic centres are highly regarded destinations for watching and even participating in diverse and unique forms of cultural expression. Cultural tourism, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is an important and consolidated tourism sector and its strong growth is expected to continue over the coming years. Tourism, the much dreamt of redeemer for historic centres, also represents one of the main threats to heritage conservation: visitors can dynamize an economy, yet the rapid growth of tourism often has negative effects on both built heritage and the lives of local inhabitants. Knowledge of occupancy levels and flows of visiting tourists is key to the efficient management of tourism; the new technologies—the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and geographic information systems (GIS)—when combined in interconnected networks represent a qualitative leap forward, compared to traditional methods of estimating locations and flows. A methodology is described in this paper for the management of tourism flows that is designed to promote sustainable tourism in historic centres through intelligent support mechanisms. As part of the Smart Heritage City (SHCITY) project, a collection system for visitors is developed. Following data collection via monitoring equipment, the analysis of a set of quantitative indicators yields information that can then be used to analyse visitor flows; enabling city managers to make management decisions when the tourism-carrying capacity is exceeded and gives way to overtourism.