Tourism cognitive mapping of unfamiliar environments

Cognitive mapping is advocated as a methodology for exploring the way in which tourists come to know the areas that they visit. Analysis of sketch maps drawn by visitors to Coffs Harbour (Australia) revealed that tourists developed cognitive images of resort areas quickly and that cognitive maps are influenced by experience, both in the immediate sense of the length of time spent in the area and in the more general sense of the lifestyle to which the tourist is accustomed. However, the learning of unfamiliar environments appears to be rather more complex than predicted by views such as the anchor point theory of environmental learning.