| Abstract: | The development of tourism typologies allows the identification of various dimensions of this important sector and can be used in tourism planning and management. In this study we developed a novel and systematic classification of European Union (EU) regions according to the predominant location of hotels, distinguishing among four distinct geographical areas: coastal zones, mountain and natural areas, cities and rural areas. For this purpose, we use Geographical Information Systems to integrate regional boundaries and the geographical zoning with a detailed dataset of hotel location and capacity. We then classified the EU regions into five typologies with the assistance of a hierarchical clustering algorithm. Further exploration of the results shows very distinct tourism profiles across the identified typologies in terms of tourism intensity, seasonality and other traits. |
