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Composite Indicators for Measuring the Online Search Interest by a Tourist Destination

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Big Data and Innovation in Tourism, Travel, and Hospitality

Abstract

This chapter presents a methodology for building composite indicators to measure the public online search interest by tourist destinations. As an example, we have applied it to measure the online search interest of foreign markets, namely Spain, the UK and Germany by Portugal as a tourist destination. In order to build the composite indicators we extracted weekly and during one year, data from the Google Trends (GT) tool, based on the set of search terms chosen to define the destination Portugal. The composite indicators proposed are based on the Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA) conceptual framework and weighted by the arithmetic mean of seven primary indicators composed by fifteen sub-indicators. The results indicate the interest and popularity of Spanish, British and German foreigners by tourism in Portugal and country specific touristic products. The obtained results contribute definitively to support and help Destination Management Organizations (DMO) enabling timely decisions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In mainland Portugal the regional tourism areas are: Porto and the North, Center of Portugal, Lisbon, Alentejo/Ribatejo and Algarve.

  2. 2.

    The municipality was used because there are no overnights data with disaggregation at city/local level.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. GOVCOPP, Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portalegre, Portugal

    Maria Gorete Ferreira Dinis

  2. GOVCOPP, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Carlos Manuel Martins da Costa

  3. IEETA, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Osvaldo Manuel da Rocha Pacheco

Authors
  1. Maria Gorete Ferreira Dinis
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  2. Carlos Manuel Martins da Costa
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  3. Osvaldo Manuel da Rocha Pacheco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Gorete Ferreira Dinis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Marianna Sigala

  2. Business School, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Roya Rahimi

  3. School of Mathemetics and Computing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Mike Thelwall

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Dinis, M.G.F., da Costa, C.M.M., Pacheco, O.M.d. (2019). Composite Indicators for Measuring the Online Search Interest by a Tourist Destination. In: Sigala, M., Rahimi, R., Thelwall, M. (eds) Big Data and Innovation in Tourism, Travel, and Hospitality. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6339-9_1

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