New avenues for second home tourism research using big data: prospects and challenges

Abstract

The phenomenon of owning and visiting a second home is broadening beyond tourism due to the increase in remote working and multi-local living–people living in multiple residences. To understand people, places, and mobility linked to second homes and its implications to society better, new complementary data sources are needed to provide timely and adequate information on temporal patterns and changes in second home use. Big data sources have been used in tourism research, but less often in studies about second homes. This article aims to propose a perspective in describing the potential of utility consumption data, transaction data from mobile positioning and smart cards, social media data, and data from smartphone applications for second home tourism research. By focusing on six key questions relevant to second home tourism research, we exemplify how these data sources could provide new knowledge to the field and propose four axioms for future research.