Tourist movement patterns understanding from the perspective of travel party size using mobile tracking data: A case study of Xi'an, China. (December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhao, Xi; Lu, Xiaoni; Liu, Yuanyuan; Lin, Jun; An, Jun
• Is Part Of: Tourism management. Volume 69(2018)
• Page Start: 368
• Page End: 383
• Publication Date: 2018-12
• Subjects: Mobile tracking data -- Travel party size -- Tourist movement pattern; Tourism -- Periodicals; 338.4791
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2018.06.026
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0261-5177

Abstract

Abstract: Travel party size has been shown to affect tourists' behavior. However, due to a previous lack of big-data analytical techniques, there remains limited research on the effect of party size on tourist movements from a large-scale perspective. This paper presents an empirical case study on the understanding of tourist movement patterns from the perspective of party size using mobile tracking data in Xi'an, China. A Fine-grained Travel Party Partition (FTPP) method is proposed to automatically distinguish accompanied tourists from a dataset of all tourists in Xi'an. After aggregating travel parties according to the size, tourist movement patterns are compared across different party sizes from demographic, spatial and temporal aspects. We further discuss how the obtained insights can help the stakeholders in travel package improvement, connectivity enhancement among attractions, attraction planning and management, and personalized next-attraction recommendation. Highlights: We present a large-scale case study understanding tourist movement patterns from the perspective of travel party size. A Fine-grained Travel Party Partition method is proposed to automatically distinguish accompanied tourists. Movement behavior of 689, 094 tourists are studied. Tourist movement patterns are compared across different party sizes from demographic, spatial and temporal aspects. We further discuss how the obtained insights can help the stakeholders.