The Analytical Tools for Tourism Development through Social Media Data and Spatial Morphological Analysis

Abstract

In the tourism sector, social media data help elucidate the travel behavior and activities of travelers through images and reviews. However, geospatial studies with spatial analysis tools such as GIS are still required by researchers who hope to gain beneficial insight into tourism development from such social media data. In addition to spatial studies, Space syntax analysis is used to explain the spatial characteristics and accessibility of both pedestrians and vehicles; however, the method doesn't consider how people use the space. Therefore, using social media with space syntax analysis will help enhance the understanding of both tourism and spatial aspects. This research aims to develop analytical tools to support tourism studies with the GIS (graphic information system) process using social media data analysis and spatial morphological results from space syntax analysis. The study found that the accessibility potential of a destination does not enhance the popularity of tourist attractions as much as relevant images or attractions due to many popular tourist attractions being located in areas with low potential accessibility. While the image processing and text processing results can extract hidden traits and identities in each attraction, another result is that the analytical tool developed in the study can help quantify tourism activities and perform preliminary content analysis of the data from text and Image processing through the GIS software. It is also used to overlay tourism activities and spatial morphology results in order to recognize the tourism development potential of the area in terms of destination image tourism activities and accessibilities. The tool produces useful results and assists in decision-making for the development of tourist attractions.