GIS and Remote Sensing

The need to understand critical factors for competitiveness of tourist destinations and their temporal changes has grown considerably in recent two decades. This has become an especially relevant issue for tourism places located in the transition economies of post-Soviet space, particulary Baltic States, where different multi-level destination and entrepreneural networking forms are created on the basis of centrally planned economies infrastructure. New tourism system has been created and there have been unprecedented global changes as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The recent development of GIS analysis tools has stressed the meaning and role of space, spatiality and contextuality of tourism places in new ways, providing valuable insight about comprehensive structural changes and development factors. This research aims to analyze the historical transformation process of the hospitality industry and destination management in Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Spatial contexts and changes are discussed and development directions are highlighted, providing common problematics in relation to path-dependent and path-creative perspectives. Rapid changes in the tourist accommodation sector are mapped with multi-factor spatial analysis method, characterizing new trends of international and domestic tourism demand. Forecasting abilities of spatial development will be discussed in context of tourism flow analyses and possibilities to create sustainable network of three-level destination management system in all three Baltic States.