This paper presents the research and demonstration (R&D) agenda that was developed as part of the ARTIST project commissioned by the European Commission (EC) under the Transport RTD Programme of the 4th Framework Programme. The paper briefly describes the volumes, characteristics, patterns and trends of tourism mobility at the national and cross-national or European Union (EU) level as far as possible using available data. It is shown that tourism mobility constitutes a significant and relevant travel category. However, it was found that up till now strategic transport planning at the EU and national levels hardly includes tourism mobility in standard transport policy development processes. At the city level, the impact of urban tourism mobility on local transport is dealt with and it is concluded that local transport planning is not paying sufficient attention to tourism mobility. In brief, a number of strategies and related actions for visitor flow management practices are presented. Finally a R&D agenda is presented, based on the gaps in knowledge and the needs for improvement of the state-of-the-art. The agenda consists of a thematic structure and 21 research themes. (A)
Abstract