IT'S a conundrum which has long-plagued NSW tourism planners: how to pull visitors from Sydney's glittering lights to the wineries of Mudgee, the white sands of Jervis Bay and the cosmopolitan cuisine of Griffith.
But a smartphone app being developed by Sydney researchers could yield new insights into the places tourists flock to, the ones they avoid, and how they decide between them.
It is hoped the findings will clear obstacles which stop visitors from venturing into regional NSW and help disperse tourism dollars more evenly across the state.
Deborah Edwards and Tony Griffin of University of Technology, Sydney are developing the GPS-based tool, which will track up to 200 participants who download the app to their mobile phones.
It will log what attractions they visit and how long they spend there, before questioning what prompted their decisions and whether they got lost along the way.
"The technology will give us a better understanding of what is facilitating or inhibiting tourist movement," Dr Edwards said.
"It might be the sorts of information they receive … or how accessible various types of transport are, to enable them to move beyond the city."
Recent figures show just 16 per cent of international visitors to NSW spend a night outside the confines of Sydney.
Of those who do, most are backpackers and Western tourists, while the lucrative Asian market appears largely oblivious to attractions beyond the Blue Mountains.
The new study builds on previous data gathered using GPS-enabled watches, which revealed Sydney tourists repeatedly traipsed up and down a well-worn "spine" from Circular Quay to Central and down to Darling Harbour, rarely making it past The Rocks or the inner city. It contrasted with results in Melbourne and London, where more widespread tourist attractions encouraged web-like patterns of movement.
Organisations including Destination NSW and City of Sydney have drawn on the previous findings, which also showed Sydney tourists favoured trains over buses and often found street signs confusing.
Some visitors stopped exploring when the boundaries of their city-centre maps ended, while one energetic tourist set out to buy a morning coffee and meandered through Sydney for 35 kilometres.
German tourist Theresa Elischer, 19, and her boyfriend, Sebastian Boll, 20, visited Circular Quay yesterday to see the Sydney Opera House sparkle during a brief patch of sun.
''The Opera House is the main building of Sydney. It's like the Eiffel Tower in Paris,'' Ms Elischer said.
''We don't have much time, so we want to see the important things.''
Newtown, Bondi and Manly are also on the couple's itinerary before they set off on a road trip to Melbourne.
Dr Edwards said straying from the beaten track enabled tourists to discover Sydney's vast richness.
