Big data in tourism research: A literature review

This paper might be the first attempt to present a comprehensive literature review on different types of big data in tourism research, and facilitates a thorough understanding of this sunrise research and offers valuable insights into its future prospects.

Abstract

Even at an early stage, diverse big data have been applied to tourism research and made an amazing improvement. This paper might be the first attempt to present a comprehensive literature review on different types of big data in tourism research. By data sources, the tourism-related big data fall into three primary categories: UGC data (generated by users), including online textual data and online photo data; device data (by devices), including GPS data, mobile roaming data, Bluetooth data, etc.; transaction data (by operations), including web search data, webpage visiting data, online booking data, etc. Carrying different information, different data types address different tourism issues. For each type, a systematical analysis is conducted from the perspectives of research focuses, data characteristics, analytic techniques, major challenges and further directions. This survey facilitates a thorough understanding of this sunrise research and offers valuable insights into its future prospects.