Geocaching and tourist activity in Slovenia: An exploration of travel patterns

Understanding tourist flows is essential for tailoring offerings to meet visitor needs and maintain competitiveness in the global tourism market. Traditional methods of analysing these flows are increasingly being supplanted by data generated from online sources shared by tourists, enabling analyses based on both traveller demographics and regional attributes. Geocaching, a form of outdoor recreation that leverages GPS technology to locate hidden geocaches, offers one such data source. This study explores how geocaching activity patterns across Slovenian municipalities, covering all 212 municipalities, categorized into 6 municipality types, compare to typical tourist visitation trends. The primary objectives were to assess whether geocaching is a viable alternative data source for analysing tourism in Slovenia and whether it can stimulate tourism in less-visited regions. Results indicate that geocaching, with 5,724 geocaches found 879,860 times by 53,854 users from 2008 to 2020, is an emerging element of the Slovenian tourism landscape. By correlating geocaching data with official tourism statistics at the municipal level, we found a positive association between geocaching finds and tourist visits, particularly in areas of high tourist interest. Additionally, geocaching activity in non-traditional tourism destinations suggests its potential to attract visitors to underrepresented regions.