Tourism analytics with massive user-generated content: A case study of Barcelona

Abstract The aim of this paper is to highlight the usefulness of big data analytics to support smart destinations by studying the online image of Barcelona (a leading smart city and tourist destination) as transmitted via social media through the analysis of more than 100,000 relevant travel blogs and online travel reviews (OTRs) written in English by tourists who have visited the city in the last 10 years. The proposed methodology used in this paper facilitates the massive gathering, cleaning up, and analysis of tourism-related user-generated content (UGC) from the most suitable sources, and helps to define the transmitted image of the city through collecting and processing large volumes of digital data. It is also used to extract business intelligence (BI) from OTRs concerning visits to Barcelona’s main landmark/attraction, La Sagrada Familia. The findings of this massive content analysis of information from a trustworthy source, UGC data, is very useful in appling BI to destination management, both in order to develop and assess marketing strategies and to improve branding and positioning policies among tourism and marketing organizations. It reinforces the ability of cities such as Barcelona to develop a smart city and destination concept, as well as a strategy for themselves.