Social media data in tourism planning: Analysing tourists’ satisfaction in space and time

Social media are playing an increasingly important role as information resource in tourism both for customers (i.e the tourists), who gather trustworthy information from peers supporting the choice of destinations and services, and for businesses which may use the same information for improving their product supply. However, the use of social media data also offer new opportunities for transparent and democratic decisions support in tourism planning. According to Benitez et al. (2007) tourists are an important target audience for urban planning: with better understanding of the motivations of tourists and tailoring provision accordingly, decision making can be facilitated by emphasizing the strengths of destination for past and potential visitors. In addition, information related to tourists’ perceptions and opinion is not analysed yet by planners. The success of a tourist destination depends mainly of factors related to both the location and the services that the local industry may offer (Crouch et all, 2004). Therefore, understanding the user satisfaction to this respect may offer valuable information in tourism planning both at the local and regional levels. In the light of the above premises, the goal on the study presented in this paper is to prupose an integrated approach to investigate the relationships among tourists’ satisfaction, destination resources and tourism industry for regional tourism planning. The methodology developed in the study includes data collection from popular tourism social media platforms (i.e. booking.com and tripadvisor.com), and their integration with territorial and tourism data. Spatial and statistical analysis techniques are then applied to elicit insights on success factors from tourists perceptions which may be used as planning support. The case study demonstrates the value of social media data and computational social science techniques in tourism planning and concludes with a critical discussion of the potential of using such an approach in spatial planning in general.