Harnessing social media to understand tourist travel patterns in muti-destinations

Abstract

Understanding travel patterns is helpful for decision-makers to draw insights from consumers' perspectives. This work took advantage of social media and analysed tourists' travel patterns from the length of itineraries and duration of stay. Using Chinese tourists in Australia as a case study, results showed that most visitors prefer to stay in two core destinations, with an average duration of 8.5 days, while adding one destination increases the stay by around 2.5 days and caps at approximately 14 days. The travel patterns were further analysed by social network analysis and explained the network structure using core-periphery theory. The results were compared with official national survey data and demonstrated encouraging accuracy, which provides practical implications for destination planning and management.

Keywords

• Travel patterns
• Social network analysis
• Social media
• Core-periphery theory
• Centrality