关键词: Flickr图片; UGC; 数据挖掘; 旅游研究

Abstract:

UGC (User Generated Content), including the social network photos, has been widely adopted in tourism marketing and travel destination image (TDI) research. However, the analysis of large-scale UGC requires some computer technical support, which builds an apparent barrier for ordinary tourism researchers. This paper proposes and implements a general Photo-based Metadata Mining System, named PMMS, aiming to provide a general analysis platform for massive UGC photos. PMMS provides 4 functions to serve the tourism and travel research: (1) Point of Interest (POI) analysis; (2) tourists historical comparison; (3) tourists' movement analysis; and (4) destination image perception based on photos. In POI analysis, the geographic information embedded inside the photos’ metadata are extracted and visualized using some Arc GIS tools to achieve the distribution of the points of interest at the destination. In tourists’ historical comparison, photos are visualized through their taken time and geographic information, and then a time-line based tourism research could be analyzed using it. Also, as an important topic in tourism research, tourists’ movement analysis is frequently adopted in tourism planning and intelligent route design. Lastly, TDI perception is one of the most active topic in tourism research and is the basis of the destination marketing, and UGC photos provide a new dimension for TDI analysis. In this study, we take Rome, the capital of Italy, as a case study to illustrate the capabilities of PMMS in the tourism and travel research.

Keywords: Flickr photos; UGC; data mining; tourism research