András Ekés, managing director of Mobilissimus held his presentation about the connections between tourism and public transport at the CIVITAS Forum in Graz. He was describing the contacts and missing links of the two sectors through several European examples. It was presented how contradictory is when a city is dissuading tourists of the public transport due to the disintegration and weakness of the services or the lack of available information. These public transport systems are usually positioned for frequent and local users, tourists are facing challenges when searching for and using the services.
In more and more areas, there is interoperability of public transport and touristic services through ticketing solutions and discounts or using well-functioning information systems. City-cards, longer-period transport passes available for touristic purposes too are drawing the two sectors closer to each other and represent incentives for a stronger use of public transport also by tourists.
The most intelligent versions are the combined solutions when touristic destinations’ accommodation sites offer free public transport for guests even on regional scale; and in mobility areas (vehicles, stations) users get all information on the available touristic attractions of the area.
These combined services are not unselfish: they may contribute to an important decrease of personal car use, and raise the share of public transport, thus these measures have positive impacts on the environment and transport safety too. Through these solutions, the size of the area visited by tourists can grow, the indirect revenues should be higher and finally the awareness of the touristic areas will increase.
