Social smart destination: A platform to analyze user generated content in smart tourism destinations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a platform that uses social media as a data source to support the decisions of policymakers in the context of smart tourism destinations initiatives. The proposed platform was implemented and tested during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. In total were analyzed 7.5 million tweets. The results show that it is possible to identify the nationality, language of the posts, points of agglomeration and concentration of visitors. Overall the initial results suggest that data collected from Twitter posts can be applicable to the effective management of smart tourism destinations.