Study and Monitoring of Itinerant Tourism along the Francigena Route, by Camera Trapping System

Abstract

Tourism along the Via Francigena is a growing phenomenon. It is important to develop a direct survey of path’s users (pilgrims, tourists travel, day-trippers, etc.) able to define user’s profiles, phenomenon extent, and its evolution over time. This in order to develop possible actions to promote the socio-economic impact on rural areas concerned. With this research, we propose the creation of a monitoring network based on camera trapping system to estimate the number of tourists in a simple and expeditious way. Recently, the camera trapping, as well as the faunal field, is finding wide use even in population surveys. An innovative application field is the one in the tourist sector, becoming the basis of statistical and planning analysis. To carry out a survey of the pilgrims/tourists, we applied this type of sampling method. It is an interesting method since it allows to obtain data about type and number of users. The application of camera trapping along the Francigena allows to obtain several information about users profiles, such as sex, age, average lengths of pilgrimages, type of journey (by foot, by horseback or by bike), in a continuous time period distributed in the tourist months of the 2014.