Big data in tourism research: A literature review

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.