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Urban development has received increasing concern in the field of heritage conservation in the developing context in recent decades, against the backdrop of the second wave of urbanization. The massive urban transformation has posed enormous challenges to heritage conservation, leading to its damage, destruction, reconstruction as well as commercialization. Nevertheless, different voices are heard, highlighting the role of heritage in urban social, cultural and economic development and arguing for the compatibility of the two. Tourism has taken an important position in this latter integrated approach to heritage conservation and urban development, due to its contribution to urban development, largely from an economic angle but also, increasingly importantly, from social and cultural angles on the one hand, and its potential support for heritage conservation and promotion of heritage awareness on the other hand. However, the role of tourism in heritage conservation and urban development is more complex and mixed in practice than assumed. Heritage tourism is not only a remarkable but also a debated form of tourism, particularly in the developing world where economic motives tend to overshadow its endeavour for heritage conservation in the broader context of local and regional (economic) development. In this light, the assumption of the mediating role of tourism for heritage conservation in urban development is quite problematic. It needs to be put into perspective and requires further elaboration.As for China, the country has witnessed an increasing engagement of tourism with heritage and urban development in recent decades, yet the mutual relationships are poorly researched. Therefore, this research aims to investigate and understand the relations among heritage, tourism and urban development as well as tourism’s role(s) in between. The empirical research is conducted in the city of Xi’an, with two heritage (tourism) sites, namely the Ming City Wall and the Fengyukou Oil Mill, chosen for detailed case studies. The two cases are carefully selected to ensure their pertinence, comparability and complementarity. The former, located in the city center, enjoys a state-protected tangible heritage status since 1961 and receives urban development and tourism development impacts for quite a long period. The latter, intangible heritage at the provincial level since 2009, is located in the rapidly urbanizing outskirt and the tourism and urban development impact is only very recent.Research findings indicate that three regimes exist featuring different heritage conservation, tourism and urban development patterns and with tourism playing different roles in between. In the third regime (21st century onwards), an integrated heritage-tourism-urban development agenda has taken shape and renders the mediating role of tourism possible. However, real case studies show mixed results. The mediating role of tourism is mostly seen in the City Wall case, but not in the Oil Mill case. A comparison of the two cases suggests that the perception of heritage and its position in the heritage, tourism, urban development relation, the development agenda and the role of tourism within, and the power dynamics between heritage administrations and local governments are, among others, the major factors affecting the realization of tourism’ mediating role. To sum up, tourism is able to play a mediating role in the third regime, but this mediating role cannot be taken for granted as it is very case and context dependent. Further efforts need to be made on the above-mentioned aspects to ensure a healthy, balanced and sustainable heritage, tourism and urban development relation.

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In deze thesis worden de mogelijkheden om informatie te verkrijgen over toerisme op basis van big data verkend door gebruik te maken van de reeds bestaande literatuur en een vergelijkend onderzoek. Meer specifiek zal dit onderzoek bestaan uit een vergelijking tussen twee manieren om het aantal dagtoeristen aan de Belgische Kust te meten. De eerste is de klassieke manier die Westtoer momenteel nog toepast, op basis van autotellingen en de verkoop van treintickets, de tweede maakt gebruik van mobiele telefoongegevens van Proximus. De voor- en nadelen van beide manieren worden onderzocht, net als de verschillen in resultaten tussen de twee manieren. Om deze afwijkingen in detail te onderzoeken, wordt er gebruik gemaakt van lineaire correlaties en residu-analyses. Bovendien zal er naar een verklaring achter deze verschillen worden gezocht. Ook zal er worden getracht om te bepalen of de methodes die onderzocht werden in deze gevalstudie - de Belgische Kust - ook overdraagbaar zijn voor andere cases. Er blijkt inderdaad een verschil te zijn tussen het model gebruikt door Westtoer en het model van Proximus, al is er wel een sterk lineair verband tussen de resultaten van de twee modellen. De verschillen tussen de modellen waren niet altijd even duidelijk te verklaren, maar het model van Proximus blijkt meer voordelen te kennen dan dat van Westtoer. In de toekomst zijn mobiele telefoondata bijgevolg een erg interessante optie om informatie in te winnen over (dag)toerisme.