Multidimensional Analyses of Social Media Related Geographic Information: a Study Concerning the Urban Area of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy)

The widespread diffusion of tourism social media platforms is playing an increasingly important role as information source both for tourists, who gather reliable information supporting destinations’ choice and services from peers, and for businesses, who can use the same information for improving their marketing strategies. The use of this type of information could also offer new opportunities for decision-support in tourism planning. By means of improved understanding of the travel motivations and by tailoring tourism service supply, decision making can be facilitated by emphasising the strengths of tourist destinations for past and potential visitors. However, information about tourists’ perceptions and opinions is not always properly analysed by planners. User satisfaction depends on factors related to the location and the services quality that the local industry proposes. Moreover, its understanding may offer valuable knowledge in tourism planning at the regional and local levels. The goal of the study of the paper is to propose an integrated approach to investigate, qualitatively and quantitatively, the relationships between tourists’ satisfaction, geographic locations and tourist enterprises in supporting decision-making processes. The methodology implemented in the study includes data collection from Booking and TripAdvisor.com and their integration with authoritative territorial data. Spatial and statistical analysis techniques are applied in order to assess tourists’ perceptions on success factors, which may be used as planning support tools. The case study concerns the municipality of Cagliari and demonstrates the value of social media-related data integrated by authoritative information in tourism planning. Finally, the paper proposes a critical discussion on the effectiveness of using the implemented integrated approach in order to address other planning issues. The discussion underlines the potential of the proposed approach in order to address other planning questions as well