Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine visitor management in the German-Swiss border area of the Lake Constance region.Taking a customer perspective, it determines the Ash Catchers requirements for an application with the ability to optimize personal mobility.Design/methodology/approach - A quantitative study and a survey of focus groups were conducted to identify movement patterns of different types of visitors and their requirements concerning the development of a visitor management application.Findings - Visitors want an application that provides real-time forecasts of issues such as traffic, parking and queues and, at the same time, enables them to create a personal activity schedule based on this information.
Research limitations/implications - Not every subsample reached a sufficient number of cases Rockets to yield representative results.Practical implications - The results may lead to an optimization and management separation of mobility flows in the research area and be helpful to municipal planners, destination marketing organizations and visitors.Originality/value - The German border cities of Konstanz, Radolfzell and Singen in the Lake Constance region need improved visitor management, mainly because of a high level of shopping tourism by Swiss visitors to Germany.In the Summer months, Lake Constance is also a popular destination for leisure tourists, which causes overtourism.
For the first time, the results of this research presented here offer possible solutions, in particular by showing how a mobile application for visitors could defuse the situation.