Modern tools for creating webmaps and geoportals for tourists: the problems of use

Abstract

Information and communication technologies at the present stage are one of the key factors in the tourism development. Geoinformational services are becoming increasingly widespread and widely used. However, their implementation is constrained by several problems. The article is aimed at identifying the basic problems of using modern software to create interactive tourist web maps and geoportals. Cartographic, descriptive, and comparative methods, analogies, modeling, mathematical and statistical, analysis and synthesis are the main research methods. The study is based on geoinformation, geographical, systemic, integrated and situational research approaches. The study made it possible to identify following problems: the “high threshold” for entering in the complexity of technologies and the costs for them, the insufficient number of qualified specialists and the completed methodological support, the need to create interdisciplinary creative teams (web programmers, cartographers, designers, and tourism specialists etc.), the collection, storage and processing of high-quality and sufficient data volumes, ensuring the usefulness and ergonomic use of web maps by users, low interest in the service development of major leaders in the market of information technologies, etc. The authors examine these problems through the prism of the main software products providing solutions to the basic problems of creating interactive tourist web maps and geoportals. The main provisions of the article are approbated through the tourist geoportal of Lake Baikal, as well as the interactive tourist maps of Moscow region created by the authors as part of the implementation of the innovative model of project training for students of the Russian State University of Tourism and Service.