Spain looks “fat” on Tourism Profit Map

Monday 21 August 2006 by Edward.

As far as tourism profits go, Spain is fat and Canada is thin. In 2003, Spain earned US$33 billion in net earnings from tourists — more that twice that of the USA, the world’s second highest tourist earner. That’s the character of equal-area cartograms created by Worldmapper. Countries are “re-sized” depending on what is being mapped. This makes for some very strange-looking, but eye-opening, maps.

To date, Worldmapper has 172 maps in 27 categories. More are planned. Eight maps relate to tourism: tourist destinations, tourist origins, net-in tourism, net-out tourism, tourism receipts, tourism expenditures, tourism profit and tourism loss. Each map can be reproduced via high-resolution PDF files, and data opened with Excel spreadsheets. The Worldmapper team is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, University of Michigan, the Leverhulm Trust and the Geographical Association.

How aboute trying to create your own cartogram within regions of your own country?

Rule 5 “The Rule of Perceived Value”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, shows that ‘First impressions really are lasting impressions’. “Each entryway to your community”, writes Brooks, “… provides the first hint about (its) character and quality”. Maps can do the same thing.

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