Big Data and analytics in tourism and hospitality: a perspective article

Abstract

A perspective articlePurpose: This study aims at discussing the evolution of Big Data and Analytics in the tourism and hospitality field. It analyses the important role that Big Data (BD) has played so far in tourism and hospitality research and delineates how it might evolve in the future.Design/methodology/approach: In line with the Platinum Jubilee Special Issue of Tourism Review, this work consists of a critical and conceptual analysis including a mini literature review of recent work in the area at the intersection of BD and tourism and hospitality research.Findings: Findings suggest that tourism and hospitality scholars are increasingly aware of and adopting BD approaches to retrieve, collect, analyse, report and visualize their data. However, a number of avenues for improvement in the use and interpretation of BD and BD analytics as both sets of methods and technology need to be developed. Moreover, BD analytics promise to enhance a number of digital technologies in tourism and hospitality such as AI and IoT that heavily rely on data. As such we envision that a new digital entrepreneurship field might be shaped within the tourism and hospitality literature. Research pathways for future inquiry at the intersection of big data and tourism and hospitality are outlined.Originality/value: While thinking retrospectively about research revolving around BD and its role in the tourism and hospitality research field so far, this study also addresses the challenges pertaining to how BD research will be conducted in the next seven decades within tourism and hospitality.

The relevance of mixed methods for network analysis in tourism and hospitality research

“…The size of the networks studied is relatively small and only 22.8% use networks that contain more than one thousand nodes (e.g., Racherla & Hu, 2010;Raisi et al, 2018). This might look surprising in a period when a significant buzz is made around the possibility to leverage 'big' data actually available in the sector (e.g., Mariani, 2019). However, despite the availability of more sophisticated data retrieval, processing, analysis and reporting and visualization tools and techniques, studies using big data analytics techniques are relatively scant in the hospitality and tourism literature.…”

“…Third, given the time and resource consuming nature of mixed methods, it appears that several researchers have managed to build a research agenda allowing them to generate multiple outputs (see Czernek-Marszałek, 2018, 2019) basically on the same network. This is a particularly fortunate case as it allows longitudinal approaches to be adopted, that could lead also to Convergent parallel mixed methods designs or even to Explanatory Sequential Design (when the qualitative data collection and analysis is undertaken after the quantitative analysis).…”

“…For instance, the two papers analyzed (Czernek-Marszałek, 2018, 2019 Fourth, not many purely qualitative researchers have studied large networks where the relevance of every tie needs to be measured. This is certainly one of the cases when resorting to simple metrics would signal comprehensiveness of the methodological approach at the expense of depth in the analysis.…”

“…However, to our knowledge almost no attempts have been made to adopt a truly mixed-method approach to explore first the perceptions of online users when reading online reviews or other social media content Mariani, Ek Styven and Ayeh, 2019) through a kind of netnographic approach to generate a conceptual model of online users behaviour. The model could be tested in a second stage through quantitative methods such as surveys or experiments or even digital analytics (Mariani, 2019).…”

“…Overall, and in light of the potential discrepancy of the findings stemming from purely quantitative methods or purely qualitative methods, we encourage more mixed methods in the study of tourism and hospitality networks. Accordingly, we hope that mixed-method studies, that represent still a minority of the literature dealing with social networks (e.g., Czernek-Marszałek, 2018, 2019, might become more popular for the new generations of tourism and hospitality researchers. Accordingly, we urge scholars examining tourism networks to effectively deploy and triangulate qualitative and quantitative methods to unleash the power of mixed methods (Creswell, 2003(Creswell, , 2014Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007) and gain a richer and more accurate understanding of the tourism and hospitality networks they examine.…”