Exploration of Tourist Activities in Urban Destination Using Venue Check-in Data

Understanding the differences and similarities in the activities of tourists from various cultures is important for tourism managers to develop appropriate plans and strategies that could support urban tourism marketing and managements. However, tourism managers still face challenges in obtaining such understanding because the traditional approach of data collection, which relies on survey and questionnaires, is incapable of capturing tourist activities at a large scale. In this article, we present a method for the study of tourist activities based on a new type of data, venue check-ins. The effectiveness of the presented approach is demonstrated through a case study of a major tourism country, France. Analysis based on a large-scale data set from 19 tourism cities in France reveals interesting differences and similarities in the activities of tourists from 14 markets (countries). Valuable insights are provided for various urban tourism applications.