Tourism activities play an important role in contributing to the social, politi
cal and economic health of
modern
society
(Telfer 2009; Worthington & Dolle
ry 2000)
.
A tourist destination is pointless without tourists
(Lew
1987)
and tourists will not visit a destination that lacks attractions
(Gunn 1988)
.
A
ccessibility to tourist
attractions is one
of the important factors
that
influence
tourist decision making on the choice of attractions to
visit
(
Boniface & Cooper 2001)
.
Accessibility can be defined as the
ease of
reach
ing to
tourist attractions by the
availab
ility and quality of
travel modes
,
road
networks,
attractions facilities
such as toilets and drinking water
and
attractions
functionalitie
s
such as open hours and entrance fees
.
A number of methods have been used by
researchers to study accessibility to different geographic places such as worksites, shops, and airports
(Hägerstrand 1970; Hansen 1959; Kwan 1998; Miller 1991; Preston 2001; Preston & Raje 2007)
.
In the field of
tourism, accessibility to tourist attractions has not been thoroughly
investigated, although it is usually considered
one of the influential factors in the attractiveness of tourist d
estinations
(Lew 1987; Reinius & Fredman 2007;
Wang & Davidson 2010)
. Priskin
(2001)
used
accessibility to natural
-
based attractions as one of the natural
resource measurements that delineate the quality of attractions in the Central Coast region of Western Australia.
Deng, King
&
Bauer
(2002)
use
d
accessibility to the attractions as one of five factors in evalu
ating natural
attractions in the state of Victoria. Prideaux
(2002)
discussed
the use of tangential attractions to attract visitors to
promote isolated attractions in
Adelaide, South Australia, underscoring the significance of location and
accessibility as basic factors attracting visito
rs to isolated sites. Hughes
&
Jones
(2010)
evaluate
d
the
management of remote attractions in the Gascoyne region
of
Western Australia, similarly conclud
ing
that
accessibility is one of the factors th
at affect the perceived quality of an attraction.
Despite the importance of
studying accessibility to tourist attractions for decision
-
makers, planners, and managers of tourist attractions, this
topic has not received attention from researchers in the fiel
d of tourism as a primary subject. Therefore, the
objective of this paper is to
develop a method
to
measure
accessibility to tourist attractions
at
a
regional scale
.
Measuring
accessibility will
provide
decision
-
makers
with
a meaningful tool to develop plans for improving
accessibility
with the purpose to effectively attract
more tourists to
destinations
.