Do Visitors Visit What the Tours Industry Supplies? Sightseeing Tours Versus First-timers’ Photos

Abstract

ABSTRACT Tourist behaviour within destinations is a research topic of increasing interest. The most relevant approaches focus on demand and are aimed at detecting factors affecting travel patterns, or revealing the mobility flows shaping tourism destinations. This paper adds another layer to this stream of research by including the supply-side, contrasting it with the demand-side. It aims to detect potential market opportunities by overlapping the geographical distribution of geolocated user-generated photos from social media taken by first time visitors to Cartagena, Colombia, versus the attractions offered in city tours. Mixed-method approaches are used to analyse the association between both datasets, including spatial analysis, correlation and cluster analysis. The results show a partial overlap in the correlation between attractions included in city tours and geotagged tourist photos. This opens up a debate on the need for tours to adapt their products to how visitors consume the city's attractions and spaces of interest.