English abstract
Geographic information systems (GIS) is a computer system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and display all types of spatial data. GIS has a long history of applications in different fields including urban planning, Management and Policy, Planning and Economic Development, Natural Resource Management, Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Real Estate, Business, Civil Engineering/Utility, Political Science, and Environmental Sciences. However, tourism sector has not benefited fully from GIS capabilities. GIS can be used as a database for tourist resources (Inventory Function). It can be used as an analysis technique (Spatial Analysis Function). Moreover, it can be used as an evaluation tool for tourism planning (Decision Support System), and it can be used as well to promote and develop tourism sector using the integration between GIS and Web (WebGIS) for (Presentation and display function). In this paper, some case studies of GIS applications in tourism will be presented and discussed. The main aim of this paper is to encourage the use of GIS in tourism sector especially tourism planning.
