Exploring the travel behaviors of inbound tourists to Hong Kong using geotagged photos

• Published in: Tourism management (1982) 2015-02, Vol.46, p.222-232
• Main Authors: Vu, Huy Quan, Li, Gang, Law, Rob, Ye, Ben Haobin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Data mining; Geotagged photo; Global positioning system; Travel behavior
• ISSN: 0261-5177; 1879-3193
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2014.07.003

Insight into tourist travel behaviors is crucial for managers engaged in strategic planning and decision making to create a sustainable tourism industry. However, they continue to face significant challenges in fully capturing and understanding the behavior of international tourists. The challenges are primarily due to the inefficient data collection approaches currently in use. In this paper, we present a new approach to this task by exploiting the socially generated and user-contributed geotagged photos now made publicly available on the Internet. Our case study focuses on Hong Kong inbound tourism using 29,443 photos collected from 2100 tourists. We demonstrate how a dataset constructed from such geotagged photos can help address such challenges as well as provide useful practical implications for destination development, transportation planning, and impact management. This study has the potential to benefit tourism researchers worldwide from better understanding travel behavior and developing sustainable tourism industries. •A novel approach to travel behavior analysis is introduced, based on geotagged photos.•A dataset comprises photos on Flickr by Hong Kong inbound tourists is built.•The spatial and temporal information of photos infers tourists' movement trajectories.•The advantage of the approach is shown by analyzing inbound tourist travel behavior.•The study benefits destination development, transportation planning, and impact management.