A systematic literature review on the use of big data for sustainable tourism

Sustainable tourism research focuses on mitigating or remediating environmental, social and economic impacts on tourism. In the past years, Big Data approaches have been applied to the field of tourism allowing for remarkable progress. However, there seems to be little evidence to support that such approaches are an inspiration to sustainable tourism and are being implemented. In this context, we aim to obtain a comprehensive overview of the use of Big Data in sustainable tourism to address various issues and understand how Big Data can support decision-making in such scenarios. To that end, this paper reports on the results of a literature review via a combination of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) in Software Engineering, and the use of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. In summary, we investigated four facets: (a) sources of big data, (b) approaches, (c) purposes, and (d) contexts of application. The results suggest that the use of various approaches have impacted practices in sustainable tourism. The findings provide a thorough understanding of the state of the art of Big Data application in sustainable tourism and provide valuable insights to foster growth both in terms of research and practice

In search of a good life in a southern European country: The new Italian migration to Athens and Valencia

The most studied mobility flows from southern Europe today are those towards other highly developed areas in the world, especially northern Europe. We do not know very much about those flows directed toward other southern European countries. The main aims of this paper are to contribute to a better understanding of these processes and to find common features between them, discussing – in a comparative perspective – some research findings related to Italians living in Athens (Greece) and Valencia (Spain). These studies have been carried out with a qualitative method combining participatory observation in virtual and real Italian communities with in-depth interviews. The main result of the comparison is that both migration flows go beyond economic mobility from Southern Europe, predominantly caused by a shortage of good jobs. Other motivations seem to be at stake in these pathways of mobility. Factors attracting Italians to these two cities, such as the cost of living, the quality of services, less taxes, the safety of public spaces, among others, are related with the better quality of life as opposed to the one related to the area of origin. Those factors do not replace the relevance of economic migration motives, but certainly put forward the complexity of these emerging intra-southern European countries migration flows, underlining the multidimensional factors pushing them.Los flujos de movilidad del sur de Europa más estudiados en la actualidad son los que se dirigen a otras zonas altamente desarrolladas del mundo, especialmente al norte de Europa. No sabemos mucho sobre los flujos dirigidos hacia otros países del sur de Europa. Los principales objetivos de este trabajo son contribuir a una mejor comprensión de estos procesos y encontrar rasgos comunes entre ellos, discutiendo -en una perspectiva comparativa- algunos resultados de dos investigaciones realizadas sobre italianos residentes en Atenas (Grecia) y Valencia (España). Estos estudios se han llevado a cabo con un método cualitativo que mezcla las técnicas de observación participativa en comunidades italianas virtuales y reales y entrevistas en profundidad. El principal resultado de la comparación es que ambos flujos migratorios van más allá de la movilidad económica desde el sur de Europa, causada predominantemente por la escasez de buenos empleos. Otros motivos parecen estar en juego en estas vías de movilidad. Los factores que atraen a los italianos a estas dos ciudades, como el coste de la vida, la calidad de los servicios, los menores impuestos, la seguridad de los espacios públicos, entre otros, están relacionados con la mejor calidad de vida en comparación con la de la zona de origen. Estos factores no sustituyen la relevancia de los motivos de la migración económica, pero ciertamente ponen de manifiesto la complejidad de estos flujos migratorios emergentes entre países del sur de Europa, subrayando los factores multidimensionales que los empujan

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans

Geomatics and Virtual tourism

The most recent technological revolution, concerning web and “ICT”, not only changed individual and collective behaviors, but also allowed experiences no possible before: a real time communication, regardless of the distances; an extended access to disjointed data and sources; the shift in different realities – missing or entirely imaginary. Nowadays, we can think about a new concept of museum, much more inclusive than “objects container”: now the museum involves entire countries, entire ecosystems, entire regions. We can speak of “museum outside of the museum”, to extend museum “storytelling” to a regional scale, beyond the walls of the traditional museum. On a regional scale experiments entirely convincing have not yet been carried out, but from this point of view cultural lands can be visited as great open air museums, to find objects, artworks or signs: the whole land is a “collection” to be preserved, to be presented and to be interpreted. Thus the visit allows to elicit outstanding objects, to read into landscapes with different filters. Both the physical and virtual visit seem to be a “tour” (Minucciani and Garnero, 2013). To create a virtual tourism prototypal station, we need several and unconventional geometrical data (shared geographic databases, DTMs, digital orthoimages and angle shots, modeling with spherical cameras, ...), thematic data (related to cultural content) and no conventional input units to move and to observe how and where the observer prefers. Authors report here their experience to carry out a prototypal station, able to relate geomatics references to cultural content and to offer a whole experience, involving users also from the sensory point of view. That’s nowadays a specific purpose of new technologies applied to cultural heritage

Las redes sociales como instrumento de gestión de destinos turísticos

The main objective of this research focuses on determining the functions and application of social networks in the management of tourist destinations, with the aim of revealing the state of the art and degree of applicability. First, in order to fulfill the objectives and theoretical hypotheses, a bibliographic analysis is carried out, which leads to the elaboration of the state of the art regarding the topic on which this doctoral thesis revolves. In this sense, the state of the art of the research is elaborated from a systematic analysis of the scientific literature on smart destinations (concept, dimensions, components, management systems) and their integration with social networks. In order to respond to the second group of specific objectives and hypotheses, the methodology applied was quantitative, based on the analysis of a series of data from Spanish tourist destinations in terms of their presence and management of social networks. The quantification of these variables, for each of the 78 tourist destinations (among which were all the smart tourist destinations, hosted by the SEGITTUR project), allowed us to apply different quantitative statistical techniques, such as: a) Pearson's correlation analysis, to establish the type of interrelation between the independent variable (number of visitors) and the dependent variables, which referred to the presence and management of the destinations on the web and in social networks; and b) to determine the degree of use of social networks by the smart destinations with respect to the others, an ANOVA analysis was carried out between the variables of the most visited destinations with respect to those of the smart destinations, in order to detect possible statistically significant differences between the two groups of destinations with respect to their management of social networks. Finally, in order to fulfill the third group of objectives and specific hypotheses, and to demonstrate whether there is complementarity between the data provided by social networks and those offered by official statistics, in terms of tourism demand, a qualitative methodology is followed, since it is based on an exploratory case analysis. In this sense, the change experienced by the behaviors and feelings of tourists visiting Andalusia as a result of COVID-19 is analyzed, both with data from the Andalusia Tourism Situation Survey (ECTA, 2020) and by means of a sentiment analysis using Twitter data. For the exploratory sentiment analysis, using Twitter, the statistical program R and the library package (rtweet) were used to retrieve messages from the social network Twitter (tweets). Machine learning sentiment analysis algorithms were then applied to the resulting data. Therefore, based on the results obtained from this doctoral thesis, we believe that it is necessary for tourist destinations to have a professional specialized in the management of social networks (social media manager), as this will allow the destination to make the most of its presence in social networks. In short, it is considered that research focused on the applicability of social networks to the management processes of tourist destinations is still in its early stages of development, especially if we analyze the real applicability it is having in specific tourist destinations. This recommendation is important both when it comes to adapting to the progressive development of new technologies, as well as to the evolution of the behavior and profile of tourists, who are increasingly familiar with the use of new technologies, and demand flexible experiences adapted to their preferences, among other characteristics.El objetivo principal de esta investigación se centra en determinar las funciones y aplicación de las redes sociales en la gestión de los destinos turísticos, con objeto de poner de manifiesto el estado de la cuestión y grado de aplicabilidad. Primero para dar cumplimiento a los objetivos e hipótesis teóricas, se realiza un análisis bibliográfico, el cual da lugar a la elaboración del estado del arte respecto al tema sobre el que gira la presente tesis doctoral. En este sentido, el estado del arte de la investigación se elabora a partir de un análisis sistemático de la literatura científica acerca de los destinos turísticos inteligentes (concepto, dimensiones, componentes, sistemas de gestión) y su integración con las redes sociales. Para dar respuesta al segundo grupo de objetivos e hipótesis específicas, la metodología aplicada fue de tipo cuantitativa, basada en el análisis de una serie de datos que arrojan los destinos turísticos españoles en cuanto a su presencia y gestión de las redes sociales. La cuantificación de estas variables, para cada uno de los 78 destinos turísticos (entre los que se encontraban todos los destinos turísticos inteligentes, acogidos al proyecto de SEGITTUR), nos permitió aplicar diferentes técnicas estadísticas cuantitativas, tales como: a) el análisis de correlación de Pearson, para establecer el tipo de interrelación entre la variable independiente (número de visitantes) y las variables dependientes, que se referían a la presencia y gestión de los destinos la web y en las redes sociales; y b) para determinar el grado de utilización de las redes sociales por parte de los destinos turísticos inteligentes respecto a los restantes, se realizó un análisis ANOVA entre las variables de los destinos más visitados respecto a las de los destinos turísticos inteligentes, con objeto de detectar posibles diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre ambos grupos de destinos en lo que respecta a la gestión que hacen de las redes sociales. Por último, para dar cumplimiento al tercer grupo de objetivos e hipótesis específicas, y demostrar si existe complementariedad entre los datos que arrojan las redes sociales y los que ofrecen las estadísticas oficiales, en lo que respecta a la demanda turística, se sigue una metodología de corte cualitativa, ya que se fundamenta en un análisis de caso, de carácter exploratorio. En este sentido, se analiza el cambio experimentado por los comportamientos y sentimientos de los turistas que visitan Andalucía como consecuencia de la COVID-19, tanto con los datos de la Encuesta de Coyuntura Turística de Andalucía (ECTA, 2020) como mediante un análisis de sentimientos con datos de Twitter. Para el análisis exploratorio de sentimientos, mediante Twitter, se utilizó el programa estadístico R y el paquete de biblioteca (rtweet) para la recuperación de mensajes de la red social Twitter (tweets). A continuación, se aplicaron algoritmos de análisis de sentimientos mediante aprendizaje automático a los datos resultantes. Por todo ello, a partir de los resultados que se obtienen de esta tesis doctoral, consideramos que se hace necesario que los destinos turísticos cuenten con un profesional, especializado en la gestión de redes sociales (social media manager), pues ello permitirá al destino sacar el máximo provecho a su presencia en las redes sociales. No en vano, esta actuación posibilitará el máximo desempeño de las múltiples funciones que, a lo largo de la investigación, se han puesto de manifiesto, que pueden desempeñar esta herramienta, dentro de los procesos de gestión de los destinos turísticos En definitiva, se considera que la investigación centrada en la aplicabilidad de las redes sociales a los procesos de gestión de los destinos turísticos está aún en sus primeras etapas de desarrollo, sobre todo si analizamos la aplicabilidad real que está teniendo en destinos turísticos concretos. Esta recomendación es importante tanto a la hora de adaptarse al progresivo desarrollo de las nuevas tecnologías, como por la evolución que viene experimentando el comportamiento y perfil de los turistas, los cuales, cada vez, están más familiarizados con el uso de nuevas tecnologías, y demandan experiencias flexibles y adaptadas a sus preferencias, entre otras características