Data is all around nowadays so it will be wise to explore how beneficial it might be. Unfortunately, tourism is among the sectors where big data analytics exploitation is not at its best. That’s why we would like to share some insights coming right out of our data analytics startup enthusiasm.
Big Data analytics and tourist destinations
Any municipality or government authorities which put tourism as a priority should dig deep in unstructured big data sources in order to enhance the experience they are offering to tourists and guests. It is a must since a lot of information hidden within the big data can be extracted as insights. Such valuable pieces of information can be helpful to make the tourists willing not just to come back but to spread the good words within their friends and community.
By data clustering, we are able to understand the exact borders of locations of interests. We can do heat and time maps, that is useful in planning. By exploiting geolocation data we can create more engaging tourists routes via traffic flow analysis.
Where to look for interesting data sets?
Social media are full of data which can be exploited in terms of understanding tourism and travel behavior. It is keeping the answers to a lot of questions, including where tourists like to go, when they do it, what they like or dislike at each of the visited locations, how tourists are traveling between places, which route they are choosing and so on.
How can you extract tourists’ related data fast and easy?
Just look at the APIs for social networks like Instagram, Foursquare, Facebook, etc. All of them have a geolocation function full of consumer behavior data. If you would like to get a bit deeper, just try TripAdvisor that is full of unstructured data in the form of tourists` comments. This way you`ll get their sentiment to the particular destination, location, facility, etc.
Who can benefit from such tourists` data set?
Policy makers, government and municipality departments will be capable of better understanding the tourist’s habits, preferences, behavior patterns, and needs. This way they can improve the tourist product and service they are selling to travelers. Starting from marketing the service and finishing with infrastructure improvements.
Another large group is the business managers like providers of hospitality and travel services. Destination managers, product developers, travel agents, tour managers, hotel and restaurant managers are among the position which can achieve sweet impact to their overall performance. Last but not least are the transportation planners. Their job is crucial for citizens and travelers to be served in the most efficient way.
How to create new data-driven tourism services and business initiatives?
Once you have the data, the entrepreneurial spirit should do the rest. Geolocation big data might give you information on timing, consumer preferences, traffic flow, locations and so on. The mining of unstructured data can give us not just quantitative but also qualitative information on what tourists experience on a particular destination, what they need, what they like or dislike. The rest is a lot of work to be done.