Gulliver research app and dashboard make use of the Tourism Tracer technology* developed by the University of Tasmania.

Tourism Tracer was the largest project of its type in the world, both spatially and temporally. It is one of the most innovative and extensive research projects ever conducted into tourist travel.

Tourism Tracer began life in early 2016 as the ‘Sensing Tourist Travel in Tasmania’ project funded under the Sense-T initiative, a partnership between the University of Tasmania, CSIRO and the Tasmanian Government, and also supported by the Australian Government. 

Using smartphones and an app, we gathered unprecedented insights into where groups of visitors go, how they move around, and what influences their decisions.

For the first time, we had the ability to track how travel patterns differ according to age, home country, length of stay, reason for travel, etc.

We can see detailed information on how long someone stands at a lookout, walks through a national park or browses an art gallery.

Throughout 2016 and 2017, Tourism Tracer tracked 1000 tourists as they moved around Tasmania on trips up to 14 days in length using a fleet of smartphones and teams of recruiters at Hobart and Launceston airports and on the Spirit of Tasmania.

A breakdown of tourists by state closely matched data from the Tasmanian Visitors Survey but Tourism Tracer captured a higher proportion of international tourists.

*  Tourism Tracer, including the research app and dashboard, are owned by the University of Tasmania and these technologies are used under license by Tourism Research Technology.