Title: Social big data for sustainable smart tourism development: a conceptual framework

Authors: Valentina Ndou; Gioconda Mele

Addresses: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy ' Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Abstract: Recently, social big data are attracting increasingly the attention of tourism scientific community and decision makers, as a source of data that carries incredible insights and knowledge for innovation and value creation of the sector. Although it is widely debated about the opportunities of social big data, their practical utilisation for value creation is still in a very early phase. A suitable understanding of data and its usefulness is the essential keystone toward taking advantage. This paper aims to provide a conceptual framework as basis for guiding tourism operators and destination mangers to properly deal with social big data and create value for a sustainable smart tourism destination by extracting insights and knowledge that would help them to obtain greater intimacy from customers and to adapt to market changes.

Keywords: big data; social big data; SBD; value creation; big data analytics; smart tourism destination; sustainable tourism.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDCET.2021.116486

International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism, 2021 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.217 - 233

Received: 03 Aug 2020
Accepted: 30 Dec 2020
Published online: 26 Jul 2021 *

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