Abstract
Motives: Open POI data from OpenStreetMap and GIS software enable comparative international analyses where access to national databases is limited.
Aim: Identify and interpret the spatial heterogeneity of accommodation (hotels, hostels, guesthouses, and campsites) across the Baltic Sea Region (seven countries) using geostatistical methods.
Approach: Kernel density estimation (KDE) was used to estimate the overall density for each accommodation type. Afterwards, the density values from four KDE rasters were processed with Raster calculator, to determine the dominant type of tourist accommodation, resulting in a raster dominance map.
Results: The study confirms spatial heterogeneity in tourist accommodation across all the analysed countries, both overall and within individual types of accommodation infrastructure. The raster dominance map shows the spatial dominance of hotels in Poland and southern Finland, while campsites dominate vast areas of Sweden and Denmark. Local clusters of guesthouses and hostels are mainly found in coastal areas and large cities. Open data enables repeatable and comparative international analyses of tourist accommodation.