Going Mobile: Defining Context for On-the-Go Travelers

Travel behavior is becoming inherently dynamic and socially connected because of the increasing use of mobile technologies; as such, the concept of context is becoming increasingly important in travel and tourism and particularly within today’s technology-supported mobile environment. This article builds upon existing literature describing recent developments in context-aware system design with the aim of defining the notion of context as it relates to the mobile technological environment for tourism. As part of this effort, a conceptual framework is proposed to describe the structure and fundamental properties of context, and several implications are discussed for tourism research and the design of mobile systems.