Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Big Data analytics for forecasting tourism destination arrivals with the T
applied Vector Autoregression model
⁎
Yuan-Yuan Liua,b, Fang-Mei Tsengc, , Yi-Heng Tsengc
a
School of Management, Guizhou University (The Northern Campus), Huaxi District, 550025 Guiyang City, Guizhou, China
b
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vilnius University, Sauletekio al. 9, II Building, 10222 Vilnius, Lithuania
c
College of Management, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The prediction of tourist numbers is important for Destination Management and Marketing. While most existing
Big Data analytics methods rely on well-structured statistical data, using web search queries of the destination to forecast its tourist
Vector Autoregression model arrivals is a new way to apply Big Data analytics. However, there are no studies exploring correlation of weather,
Granger causality temperatures, weekends and public holidays with tourism destination arrivals and web search queries of the
Destination Management and Marketing
destination, respectively. This study uses the Vector Autoregressive modeling to examine the Granger causality
between actual arrivals of the studied cultural tourism destination and its web search queries, and to explore the
correlation mentioned above. The striking result is that weather has no correlation either with actual arrivals of
the studied cultural tourism destination, or with its web search queries. Meanwhile, unlike previous researchers
who discuss the predictive power of web queries on actual tourism flows, this study emphasizes their reciprocal
predictive powers upon each other. The originality of this study is exemplifying the utilization of Big Data
analytics in the tourism domain with Big Data datasets, data capture techniques, analytical tools, and analysis
results. This study further digs possible reasons for an identified short time lag length (p = 2), to provide insights
for Destination Management and Marketing.

1. Introduction
We are in the era of Big Data (Miller, 2008). Big Data is a term that
primarily describes datasets that are so large, unstructured, and com-
plex that require advanced and unique technologies to store, manage,
analyze, and visualize (Chen et al., 2012). Since the advent of the World
Wide Web, major parts of tourism information processing and trans-
actions are handled electronically (Buhalis, 2006), so numerous travel-
related electronic traces are left. These electronic traces include a large
variety and a huge number of tourism information, such as, pre-trip
planning and information searching, reservation and booking, post-trip
experiences sharing and recommendation, as well as photo uploading
and other social media interacting activities, and these large, un-
structured, and complex electronic traces become tourism Big Data
which need to be captured and analyzed so as to uncover hidden pat-
terns, correlation and other insights in the tourism domain.
Recent researches on Big Data in tourism have sprung up. Utilizing
Big Data analysis, Liu et al. (2017) reveal determinants of hotel cus-
tomer satisfaction in language groups; Xiang et al. (2015) prove the
inherent relationship between hotel guest experience and satisfaction,
and Zhang et al. (2017) show the development of tourism as a discipline
in China by using meta-analysis. Big Data analysis has also been em-
ployed to forecast tourist flows. Gunter and Önder (2016) test the
ability of 10 traffic indicators of Google Analytics of the Viennese
Destination Management Organization (DMO) to predict the tourist
arrivals to Vienna by applying big data shrinking methods with VAR
modeling. Li et al. (2017) adopt data from search engine query to
forecast tourism demand for Beijing. Meanwhile, Big Data analytics is
found in works related to Destination Management and Marketing
(DMM). Fuchs et al. (2014) illustrate how Big Data analytics is applied
at a Swedish mountain tourism destination for its knowledge infra-
structure to create and apply knowledge for the destination as a
learning organization. Marine-Roig and Anton Clavé (2015) highlight
the application of Big Data analytics in supporting Barcelona as a smart
destination by examining its online image on thousands of travel blogs
and online travel reviews (OTRs). Miah et al. (2017) deploy Big Data
analytics for tourist behavior study. Besides, Big Data techniques in
tourism research are developed, such as text mining in tourism (Godnov
and Redek, 2016), opinion mining in tourism (Bucur, 2015; Marrese-
Taylor et al., 2014), cross media and multi-agent Big Data collection for

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: fmtseng@saturn.yzu.edu.tw (F.-M. Tseng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.01.018
Received 27 February 2017; Received in revised form 21 December 2017; Accepted 14 January 2018
Available online 02 February 2018
0040-1625/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
tourism perception research (Guan and Du, 2015), and hardware for
tourism organizations to download huge amounts of data (d'Amore
et al., 2015).
In the area of tourism research, weather and temperatures are
crucial topics, which have led to the widespread attentions and interests
of researchers. Travel motivations, satisfactions, tourism demands, and
destination images are the most concerned topics in relation to desti-
nation weather or temperatures. Weather has been identified as both a
motivator and a disincentive factor for travels in the theory of ‘push and
pull’ (Crompton, 1979). Some researchers also find that climate and
weather conditions may motivate holiday travels to holiday destina-
tions (Becken, 2013; De Freitas, 2003; Gómez Martín, 2005; Falk, 2014;
Gössling et al., 2012). Weather may impact profitability of the tourism
industry in a way of reducing or increasing customer satisfaction and
loyalty for destinations (Becken and Hay, 2012). Bad weather experi-
ences more negatively impact tourist satisfaction than good weather
experiences positively do so (Coghlan and Prideaux, 2009). Weather
patterns and tourism demands are widely discussed (Becken, 2013;
Falk, 2014; Gössling et al., 2012; Kaján and Saarinen, 2013). Weather is
an ‘intangible asset’ of destinations as it is one part of destination
images (Baloglu and Mangaloglu, 2001; Echtner and Ritchie, 1991;
Gallarza et al., 2002; Pike, 2010; Tasci and Gartner, 2007). Weather
and temperatures are components of tourism demands and destination
image (Day et al., 2013). In addition, there is also a research about
impacts of weekends and weekdays on tourism motivations, for ex-
ample, differences in motivations from weekends and weekdays im-
pacting on Japanese spa tourism (Kamata and Misui, 2015). However,
there are few research studies on the impacts of weather, temperatures,
and weekends together with public holidays in a single research to
explore their impacts on tourism destination arrivals, or on web queries
about the destination.
To explore the complex relationships among these variables, we
introduce Xijiang Thousand Households Miao Village (the Miao Village,
in short) as the studied destination. It is a leading Miao cultural tourism
destination in Guizhou Province, China. Moreover, it is the biggest and
most complete original Miao Village in China, probably even in the
world. It presents tourists with the original Miao lifestyle in a Miao
Village locating on mountains, surrounded by rivers and streams. It is a
cultural destination with abundant natural resources and about 95% of
its tourists are domestic. Thus, the research questions are the following:
1: Can web search queries of the Miao Village be able to predict the
actual tourism arrivals to the village, and vice versa?
2: What is the time lag length if prediction in (1) is possible?
3: How will weather, temperatures, weekends and public holidays
impact actual tourism arrivals to the village and the web search
queries of the village?
The main contribution of the study lies in its uniqueness of invol-
ving weather, temperatures, weekends and public holidays together
with tourism destination arrivals and web search queries of the desti-
nation in one model to explore their complex relationships.
Furthermore, being different from previous tourism flows forecasting
papers, this paper emphasizes the reciprocal predictive power between
tourism destination arrivals and web search queries of the destination.
Besides, adopting Big Data analytics for data and analysis needed ex-
emplifies its application in tourism arrivals forecasting and Destination
Management and Marketing (DMM).
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2
overviews the recent literature relevant to tourism forecasting mod-
eling, providing the rationale for using the chosen methodology.
Section 3 presents the data preparation and cleansing procedures with a
conceptual framework of the destination's Big Data dataset while
Section 4 contains a discussion of the VAR (p) modeling methodology.
Section 5 presents the results, and Section 6 concludes the study with
implications and a discussion.
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
2. Literature review
2.1. The impacts of weather and temperatures on tourism
Holiday travels are motivated by the climate and weather condi-
tions at holiday destinations (Becken, 2013; De Freitas, 2003; Gómez
Martín, 2005; Gössling et al., 2012). Crompton (1979) present a ‘push-
and-pull’ model where push factors are these factors motivating tourists
traveling away from home while pull factors are those driving them
toward destinations. Falk (2014) find that warm weather is a pull factor
for tourists to select a destination, and in addition, temperatures,
duration of sunshine, as well as precipitation are important factors in
summer seasons. On the contrary, Thapa (2012) find that in long-term
tourist expectations of poor weather at a destination may restrain their
visitations. However, the impact of weather condition considerably
differs according to different destinations and types of touristic activ-
ities (Lohmann and Kaim, 1999). Smith (1993) finds that cultural tours
and urban breaks are not that dependent on weather conditions. In-
stead, holidays are reliant on natural resources and outdoor activities.
Besides, tourist perceptions of weather condition attractiveness vary
according to different destinations. Jeuring and Peters (2013) conclude
that for nature-based tourism the mist in the mountains may limit
possible visitations while the clouds surrounded valley is more im-
pressive than that with the bright sunny weather condition.
Regression models have been used to estimate the impact of
weather on tourism. The results of the first-difference regression models
of Falk (2014) show that average sunshine duration and temperatures
have significant positive impacts on domestic overnight stays while
average precipitation has significant negative effects. In his research,
Falk (2014) approve that the positive impact of temperatures on
tourism is limited. The relationship between temperature and the
number of visitations is non-linear in the form of an inverted u-shape
curve (Gössling and Hall, 2006; Rossello-Nadal et al., 2011), which
indicates a decline in temperature's effect after a given point (Falk,
2014). Besides, there is a 1-year time lag before temperatures and
sunshine duration positively impact foreign overnight stays (Falk,
2014). However, Scott et al. (2007) reveal the impact of monthly
temperatures and precipitation on tourist flows to Waterton Lakes Na-
tional Park of Canada by using monthly data from 1996 to 2003 and
remarkably find no relationship between visitations in peak summer
(July and August) and weather. Agnew and Palutikof (2006) present a
relationship between domestic tourism demand and weather conditions
in the UK, and a relationship between outbound tourist flows and
weather conditions. They find that in the UK, domestic tourism is more
responsive to variations of weather conditions, and in general, the
tourism industry of the UK benefits from warm and dry conditions. The
time lag in their research is 1-year (or -season) before international
tourism being affected by weather conditions. Taylor and Ortiz (2009)
explain time lag variations that domestic residents are more sponta-
neous, whereas international tourists need more time to plan their
visitations well in advance.
2.2. Forecasting tourism volumes and Vector Autoregressive (VAR)
modeling in the forecasts
Different methodologies can be applied to forecast tourism volumes,
but their performances vary in terms of accuracy. Athanasopoulos et al.
(2011) evaluate the performance of various methods for forecasting
tourism flows. In their research, monthly series, quarterly series, and
annual series are included. Uni- and multivariate time series ap-
proaches, and econometric models are implemented. Algorithms such
as Forecast Pro, ARIMA, exponential smoothing is included. Specific
methods, such as the Theta method and damped trend, are employed.
Frameworks, such as static and dynamic regression, autoregressive
distributed lag models, and time varying parameter models, are in-
corporated. They find that pure time-series approaches are more
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
accurate for forecasting tourism data than models with explanatory
variables while Song and Li (2008) find that no single model could
consistently outperform other models in all situations. Gunter and
Önder (2015) compare the accuracy of uni- and multivariate models.
Error Correction-ADLM, Classical VAR, Bayesian VAR, TVP, ARMA, and
ETS are used to forecast the international city tourism demand for Paris
from its five most important foreign source markets, and the results
vary according to forecast horizon and source market, which is similar
to the result of Witt and Witt (1995). Li et al. (2017) propose a fra-
mework called the Generalized Dynamic Factor Model (GDFM) as a
composite search index, which is claimed to be more accurate than
traditional time-series models or models with index created by principal
component analysis.
However, with the advent of web search query techniques, the way
researchers acquire data to forecast tourism volumes has changed.
Instead of adopting data from traditional statistical channels, re-
searchers have begun to employ data from web search engines to
forecast tourism volumes by applying various forecasting models and
frameworks. Google and Baidu, two of the most widely used search
engines, have been applied in tourism flows forecasting. Rivera (2016)
adopts search queries from Google Trends to forecast the number of
hotel nonresident registrations in Puerto Rico with a dynamic linear
model. Except for Google Trends, Google Analytics which is usually
used for web site performance analysis is also employed for forecasting
tourism arrivals. For example, Gunter and Önder (2016) employ 10
website traffic indicators of Google Analytics from the Viennese Desti-
nation Management Organization (DMO) website to predict the actual
tourist arrivals to Vienna with the VAR model class. In their research,
Bayesian estimation of the VAR, reduction to a factor-augmented VAR,
Bayesian estimation of FAVAR, and the novel Bayesian FAVAR are used
as big data shrinkage to avoid over-parameterization. Furthermore, the
performances of search engines in forecasting tourism volumes have
also been discussed. Yang et al. (2015) compare the predictive powers
between Google Trends and Baidu Index in predicting tourism volumes
in Hainan, China. The result shows that compared to the corresponding
Autoregression Moving Average (ARMA) models, both search engines
could significantly reduce forecasting errors but Baidu Index outper-
forms because of its bigger market share in China.
Forecasting tourism volumes with VAR (p) modeling have been
adopted and proved to be accurate. Song and Witt (2006) review the
recent literature on tourism modeling and forecasting and identify that
the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modeling technique is the rationale for
accurately predicting tourism flows to Macau. They adopt a general
VAR (p) model for Macau to predict its tourism arrivals from its eight
major origin countries/regions over the period 2003–2008. They pre-
dict that Macau will be faced with an increase in tourism demand from
mainland China, which has been confirmed. The study reveals that a
VAR model can be used to predict accurate medium-to long-term
forecasts. There are two advantages of applying VAR modeling in
tourism forecasting. For one thing, the VAR modeling is a theory based
approach, and for the other the modeling procedure is simplified.
Moreover, Huang et al. (2017) employ Baidu Index to provide data of
web search queries to predict tourist volumes to The Forbidden City of
China. In the study, an ADF test is applied to implement unit root
testing to ensure the stationary of the time-series data. The co-in-
tegration test is used to examine and prove that there is a long-term
equilibrium relationship between actual arrivals to The Forbidden City
and its web search queries. Residuals are used to filter keywords, and
those with negative values are excluded. A Granger causality test is
implemented, and the result is that the actual arrivals and the Baidu
Index search queries Granger cause each other. The time lag length
(p = 0.9975) is identified based on the Akaike Information Criterion
(AIC) and Schwarz Criterion (SC).
In Table 1, the referred articles are sorted out in accordance with
their forecast modeling and methods. The first half of the table presents
traditional statistical data based forecast modeling and methods, while
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
the second half presents web search queries based forecast modeling
and methods. The forecast performance of each referred forecast
modeling or method is included.
Drawn from Table 1, the reasons for the choice to use VAR modeling
for this research are listed below. First, because the VAR modeling can
be used to construct and test mutual causality between variables
(Gunter and Önder, 2016), it may fit the research question to identify
the Granger causality between the destination web search queries and
its actual tourism arrivals. Second, the lagged dependent variable
possibly reflecting word-of-mouth effects and consumer habit persis-
tence is automatically included in the VAR specification (Song and Witt,
2006), so the VAR modeling may fit this research in the context of web
search queries which reflect either potential tourists' pre-trip informa-
tion search of the destination or their post-trip behavior sharing travel
experiences or making recommendations through online texts, images,
or videos. Finally, the VAR modeling has consistent accurate forecasting
performance (Athanasopoulos et al., 2011; Gunter and Önder, 2015;
Song and Witt, 2006). However, as this research includes only a few
variables (e.g., web search queries, tickets, weather, temperature,
weekends, and public holidays), limitations, such as, over-para-
meterization, freedom running out (Song and Witt, 2006), or high di-
mensionality (Gunter and Önder, 2016), will not arise in this research,
so further shrinkage methods (Gunter and Önder, 2016) are not needed.
Besides, the limitation of Granger causality has been taken into
consideration. Granger causality is not necessarily true causality as its
name implies. It is a statistical test for determining whether a time-
series variable is useful in forecasting another variable but not which
one is to determine or cause. In this research, we intend to test the
Granger causality between the actual arrivals (tickets sold) and the web
search queries to identify their predictive power upon each other.
However, there might be potential other sources of probabilistic de-
pendence impacting both variables even though the null hypothesis is
rejected. For example, tourist word-of-mouth may have impacts on both
the actual arrivals and the web search queries of the destination, but it
has not been included as a variable.
2.3. Crawling the data
A web crawler is also known as a web spider or web robot. It is a
program that automatically browses the web and assembles web con-
tent. A web crawler must compare a topic of the internet with the
content of collected web pages. There should be proper keywords to
describe the chosen topic for the comparison. Appropriate keywords
should be those frequently used in web pages to describe the chosen
topic (Rungsawang and Angkawattanawit, 2005). A web crawler is
given a starting set of web pages as its seed pages to extract outgoing
links that appearing in the seed pages and determine what links to visit
next based on certain criteria. A crawler will not stop visiting pages
until a desired number of pages have been downloaded (Batsakis et al.,
2009). The general working principles of a web crawler are crawling,
indexing, searching, filtering, and the sorting/ranking of information
(Bhushan and Nath, 2013).
There are four types of web crawlers: general purpose web crawlers,
topical web crawlers, incremental web crawlers, and deep web craw-
lers. In our research, the topical web crawler is adopted. A topical web
crawler, also known as focused crawler, is topic oriented. It collects
specific topic related web pages to crawl. Its performance is more ac-
curate (Ahmadi-Abkenari and Selamat, 2012) because it attempts to
focus its crawling process on pages relevant to the topic, and it keeps
the overall number of downloaded web pages for processing (Pivk et al.,
2007) to a minimum while maximizing the percentage of relevant pages
(Batsakis et al., 2009).
 Y.-Y. Liu et al.

Table 1
Literature conclusion with different forecasting modeling and method.

Literature author Benchmark Data type Data period Method Forecasting

Suitable Performance

Athanasopoulos et al. Snaïve Traditional Monthly 1. Pure time series Forecast Pro (1) In smaller scale evaluations (2) without Snaïve > pure time series
(2011) statistical data quarterly ARIMA ETS explanatory variables (3) in fully automated series
annual (4) for seasonal data
2. Theta damped trend Monthly data Others > Theta/damped trend
Quarterly data Damped trend > Snaïve > Theta
Annual data Theta > Snaïve
3. Static Dynamic ADLM TVP VAR When allowing for time varying parameters within Challenging in models with exogenous or explanatory
specifications variables
Gunter and Önder Naïve Traditional Monthly EC-ADLM Not suitable for any of the studied tourist source EC-ADLM > Naïve
(2015) statistical data market
VAR (1) For German tourist source market and two or VAR > others
three months ahead (2) for Japanese tourist source
market and short and long-term (3) all studied
source markets and two years ahead
Bayesian VAR Italian and German tourist source markets, and six BVAR > others
months to one year ahead
TVP German tourist source market and two years ahead TVP > others
ARMA (1) UK tourist source market and six months ahead ARMA > others
(2) US tourist source market as well as short and
long-term

126
ETS (1) Japanese tourist source market and one year ETS > others
ahead
Naïve has been significantly outperformed across all source markets and forecast horizons
Song and Witt (2006) No comparison Traditional Quarterly VAR (1) For medium- to long-term (2) theory based (1) The lagged dependent variable reflecting word-of-mouth
statistical data approach allowing for impulse response and effects and consumer habit persistence is automatically
examine responds to ‘shocks’ in the economic included (2) a systematic approach relaxing the exogenous
variables assumption of the explanatory variables (3) likely to be over-
parameterized
Gunter and Önder ARIMA ETS Naïve Web search 1, 2, 3, 6, Novel BFAVAR (Bayesian factor- Shorter horizons (h = 1, 2 months) ARIMA > others
(2016) queries data 12 months augmented VAR with the Longer horizons (h = 3, 6, 12 months) Novel BFAVAR > others
predictive information of Google
Analytics)
Huang et al. (2017) ARIMA Web search Daily Novel ADLM (ADLM with Baidu With specific keywords of Baidu Index Novel ADLM > ARIMA
queries data keywords as explanatory
variables)
Li et al. (2017) ARMA Component Web search Weekly GDFM (Generalized Dynamic (1) High dimensional search engine queries data GDFM > others
Analysis (PCA) queries data Factor Model) (2) short - term (1 week and 4 week)
Rivera (2016) SARIMA Holt- Web search Monthly Novel DLM (dynamic linear model For over 6 months horizon but not at shorter Novel DLM > others
Winter (HW) queries data with Google search query volume) horizon
Snaïve
Yang et al. (2015) ARMA Web search Monthly Time series model with shifted and Baidu search engine has a bigger market share in Time series with Baidu search data > time series with Google
queries data summed up aggregated Baidu China than that of Google search data
search data
Time series model with shifted and
summed up aggregated Google
search data
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
3. Data
3.1. Data acquisition
3.1.1. Destination data warehouse
The Destination Management Organization (DMO) of the Miao
Village provides the study with its Big Data Warehouse which contains
data of ① daily tickets sold in 2015, shown in Fig. 1, ② daily weather of
2015 launched by China Meteorological Administration (CMA), shown
in descriptive data as sunny, cloudy, overcast, light rain, shower,
thunderstorm, light snow, glazed frost, freeze and heavy snow, ③ daily
average temperatures of 2015 launched by CMA, shown in numbers of
degree centigrade, in Fig. 2, ④ weekdays and weekends of 2015 ac-
cording to the calendar, and ⑤ public holidays launched by General
Office of the National Council of China.
3.1.2. Keywords selection
Tourists put keywords into search engines to get destination in-
formation before their visitations. To reveal the relationship between
the tourist web search queries and the actual visitations, we firstly need
to identify and select keywords put into the search engine by potential
tourists.
In this study, we perform a function of Baidu Index. Its ‘demand
mapping’ may present the most concerned and most frequent searched
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
Fig. 1. Number of daily tickets sold at the destination and key-
words web search queries of the destination, 2015.
keywords about the destination. Thus we find six keywords: ‘Travel
guide of Xijiang Thousand Households Miao Village’, ‘Night View of
Xijiang Thousand Households Miao Village’, ‘Long table feast of Xijiang
Thousand Households Miao Village’, ‘Accommodations in Xijiang
Thousand Households Miao Village’, ‘Tickets of Xijiang Thousand
Households Miao Village’, and ‘Xijiang Miao Village’ (all these key-
words are in Chinese language). There are two reasons why we do not
set corresponding English translations to these keywords as clues for
web search queries. For one thing, according to the village DMO report,
there is only about 5% tourists are inbound foreign tourists. Thus the
language used for searching information will mainly be Chinese. For the
other, there are various semantic translations to even one Chinese
word, so these six keywords in Chinese will derive too many additional
English translations.
3.1.3. Keywords web search queries with a topical web crawler
Baidu Index provides only weekly search queries in a curve shape,
still we need exact number of daily web search queries of the selected
keywords. Thus we use a topical web crawler to get the exact numbers
of web search queries of the keywords. Fig. 1 presents the number of
daily tickets sold at the destination. Thus daily web search queries of
the destination in the year of 2015, while Fig. 2 shows daily average
temperature at the destination.
Fig. 2. Daily average temperature at the destination, 2015.
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
Fig. 3. The Big Data dataset for the research.
3.2. The Big Data dataset of the research
The very word “Big” indicates size (Jagadish, 2015). ‘Big Data’ has
been characterized as a five-dimension data management and analytics
paradigm (Varma et al., 2016). Volume represents the vast amount of
data, much bigger amount than the traditional data. Variety stands for
various data with heterogeneous format from different sources. Velocity
means data processing at its gathering speed in real or near-real time.
Veracity is the uncertainty, noise and abnormality in data. Value re-
flects the hidden opportunities and insights revealed by statistical and
analytical methods (Ang and Seng, 2016; Colombo and Ferrari, 2015;
Fan et al., 2015; Huang et al., 2015; Jin et al., 2015; Miah et al., 2017;
Power, 2015; Wang et al., 2017). These are simply Big Data 5Vs.
However, the term ‘Big Data’ remains ill-defined if we talk of data
volume only (Mohanty, 2015). What matters is not the big amount of
data but extracting hidden information from it, making sense of it and
exploring its values. Thus we develop our unique Big Data dataset in-
tegrating the data of destination web search queries, daily tickets sold
at the destination, weather and temperatures at the destination, as well
as weekends and public holidays. The linked data become the Big Data
dataset of our study, shown in Fig. 3.
Depicted by Fig. 3, the Big Data dataset is different from a tradi-
tional destination data warehouse which includes only simple in-
formation such as tickets and sales, and 5Vs features of Big Data can be
reflected by our Big Data dataset. The feature ‘volume’ has been em-
bodied in the largely increased daily information of several different
components: daily tickets, weather, temperatures, weekends, public
holidays, and web search queries. The data of daily tickets, weather,
temperatures, weekends, and public holidays grow bigger and bigger as
time flies as the huge web search queries volume is composed of
countless data (traces) of trip information. The feature ‘variety’ has
been presented by the traditional structured data, semi-structured data,
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
and unstructured data. The daily tickets are traditional data, and
weather, temperatures, calendar information (weekends and public
holidays) is semi-structured data, while web search queries (e.g. texts,
images and videos) are unstructured data. ‘Velocity’ and ‘Veracity’ can
be reflected by the process of data capture, storage and transformation
while ‘value’ is realized by data analysis to uncover hidden patterns and
facts.
Big Data analytics should be a workflow with different components
connected in specific data management architecture, and it should be
able to acquire and store data, transform and process data for analysis,
include analytical tools to solve specific problems, and deliver mean-
ingful information to discover business values and insights in a timely
manner. In this research, we target to identify the correlation of
weather, temperatures, weekends and public holidays with the desti-
nation's tourist arrivals and web search queries of the destination, as
well as the Granger causality between the destination's actual arrivals
and its web search queries. Thus Big Data analytics helps research link
and organize the captured data in a Big Data dataset so that the VAR
modeling as an analytical tool can provide analysis results in order to
answer the targeted questions. And uncovered phenomena urge to dig
further for potential reasons and insights for Destination Management
and Marketing.
3.3. Data preparation and cleansing
In this study, a VAR (p) model is constructed to explore the impacts
of weather, temperatures, weekends and public holidays on actual ar-
rivals and web search queries of the Village. Each group of data from
Fig. 2 will be included into the model.
3.3.1. The variables
We set the daily tickets sold at the village as independent variable y1
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
and the daily web search queries of the village as independent variable
y2. And we set the daily weather as dependent variable x1, daily tem-
perature as dependent variable x2, weekends as dependent variable x3
and public holidays as dependent x4. x1, x2, x3 and x4 are all exogenous
variables. A practical problem with estimating a VAR (p) model is that
degrees of freedom quickly run out when more variables are introduced
although it is desirable to include as much information as possible
(Song and Witt, 2006).
3.3.2. Dummy variables
As the dependent variable x2 is numerical data, we set x1, x3, and x4
those non numerical data as dummy variables shown in Fig. 4. In x1, 0
represents good weather and 1 represents poor weather. The weather
conditions of sunny, cloudy and overcast are regard as good weather
while conditions of light rain, shower, thunderstorm, light snow, glazed
frost, freeze and heavy snow are considered as poor weather. In x3, 0
represents weekdays from Monday to Thursday, while 1 represents
weekends from Friday to Sunday because many of the tourists arrive at
the destination on Friday afternoon or evening. In x4, 0 represents non-
holiday and 1 represents public holidays.
3.3.3. Missing data
There are 5 flooding days of 2015, which results in a 5-day tem-
porary shutdown of the destination, so those five days are set as missing
data.
4. Methodology
4.1. Unit root and co-integration tests
Before modeling, we should examine and satisfy the needs of sta-
tionary and long-term equilibrium of the variables to avoid inaccuracy
of the results. Thus we adopt Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) value of
the unit root test to prove the stationary and co-integration test for the
long-term equilibrium. Traditional VAR models are designed for sta-
tionary variables without time trends (Song and Witt, 2006), and
nonstationary variables cannot pass the unit root test, so there should
be a de-trend treatment for nonstationary variable. Hodrick Prescott
Filter is used for de-trend treatment. In the equation below, zt stands for
a nonstationary variable, and the de-trend treatment is to use the value
of ztBias for the VAR (p) model.
z t = ztHP + ztBias
129
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
Fig. 4. Daily web search queries of the destination's main po-
tential source cities of visitors, 2015.
4.2. VAR (p) modeling
The VAR model is a system equation in which more than one
variable is treated as endogenous and the values of the variables are
regressed against lagged dependent variables in the system (Song and
Witt, 2006). The general VAR (p) model is shown below as Eq. (1),
where p is the lag length of the VAR, Yt is the independent variable of
am-vector time series, while m is the amount of dependent variables.
Yt−j is lagged independent variable as determinants of the system. K is
the amount of predetermined variables and Xt is a k-vector time series.
Yt C p Bp × Yt − j A × Xt
=
[m ∗1] [m ∗1]
+ ∑ j=1 [m ∗m][m ∗1]
+
[m ∗k ][k ∗1] (1)
To construct the VAR (p) model, identifying together with selecting
lag length is a key step. On the one hand, greater values of lag length
will better dynamically reflect features of the model (Song and Witt,
2006). On the other hand, greater p values will introduce larger number
of parameters into the model because if a VAR model has m equations,
there will be m + pm2 coefficients to be estimated and an unrestricted
VAR model is likely to be over-parameterized with less degree of
freedom. Thus Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) or Schwarz Criterion
(SC) can be employed to identify and select the proper p value.
4.3. Granger causality test
The Granger causality can be used to test whether all of the lagged
items of a variable have an impact on the current value of the other
variable(s). If the effect is significant, the variable will have Grainger
causality with the other variable(s), and if the effect is not significant,
there will be no causal relationship between (among) the variables. The
existence of Granger causality shows the predictive power of the vari-
ables upon each other. There are two independent variables in the
study: daily tickets sold y1 and daily web search queries y2. Thus in
order to explore the Granger causality between y1 and y2, hypotheses
should be established as:
H0: y2 does not Granger cause y1. Meanwhile, H0: y1 does not
Granger cause y2.
If the test statistic χ2 is significant, H0 will be rejected, and thus y2
Granger causes y1. In the second hypothesis, if the test statistic χ2 is
significant, H0 will be rejected, and thus y1 Granger causes y2.
Y.-Y. Liu et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134

Table 2 y1, t = c1 + b1,1,1 y1, t − 1 + b1,1,2 y2, t − 1 + b1,2,1 y1, t − 2 + b1,2,2 y2, t − 2 + a1,1 x1, t
Results of unit root test.
+ a1,2 x2, t + a1,3 x3, t + a1,4 x 4, t + ε1,2 (3)
Variables ADF values 1% critical 5% critical 10% critical Conclusion
value value value y2, t = c2 + b2,1,1 y1, t − 1 + b2,1,2 y2, t − 1 + b2,2,1 y1, t − 2 + b2,2,2 y2, t − 2 + a2,1 x1, t
y1_bias −7.0197 −3.4482 −2.8693 −2.5710 Stationary + a2,2 x2, t + a2,3 x3, t + a2,4 x 4, t + ε1,2 (4)
y2_bias −5.6609 −3.4482 −2.8693 −2.5710 Stationary
x2_bias −7.3528 −3.4482 −2.8693 −2.5710 Stationary The estimation results are shown in Eqs. (3r) and (4r). Numbers
included in the [] are the t-statistic of the estimated coefficients:

5. Results − 330.6728 0.588703 4.194850

y1, t = + × y1, t − 1 + × y2, t − 1
[− 2.24224]∗∗ [ 11.0593]∗∗∗ [ 12.6704]∗∗∗
5.1. The result of unit root test − 0.088829 − 2.236216
+ × y1, t − 2 + × y2, t − 2
[− 1.77800]∗ [− 5.65951]∗∗∗
It has been mentioned that non-stationary variables cannot pass the − 25.29595 25.81741 832.3226
+ × x1, t + × x2, t + × x3, t
unit root test unless they are treated to be de-trend variables. The non- [− 0.14611] [ 1.16602] [ 4.60950]∗∗∗
stationary variables y1, y2, and x2 are treated for de-trend and shown as 427.0785
+ × x 4, t
y1_bias, y2_bias, and x2_bias. Dummy variables do not have to pass unit [ 0.98949] (3r)
root test. In Table 2, the time series of y1_bias, y2_bias, and x2_biasare all
stationary at the significant 1% level, and thus they pass the unit root 27.97765 − 0.011646 1.195313
y2, t = + × y1, t − 1 + × y2, t − 1
test. [ 1.13501] [− 1.30891] [ 21.6004]∗∗∗
In the following part of the study, these de-trend treated variables − 0.022022 − 0.140441
+ × y1, t − 2 + × y2, t − 2
will be shown just as y1, y2, and x2, the subscript ‘bias’ will be omitted. [− 2.63713]∗∗∗ [− 2.12649]∗∗
26.00541 9.414443 − 84.05159
+ × x1, t + × x2, t + × x3, t
[ 0.89869] [ 2.54386]∗∗ [− 2.78492]∗∗∗
5.2. The result of lag rank identification and VAR (p) modeling − 75.44115
+ × x 4, t
[− 1.04572] (4r)
The smallest statistic of both AIC and SC identify that the lag length
should be 2, thus in this study p = 2, shown in Table 3. The joint AIC and SIC of these two equations are 31.44 and 31.63.
As there are two independent variables in this study, the equation Besides, *, **, and *** represent the statistic being significant at dif-
can be interpreted as, ferent probability levels of 10%, 5%, 1%, respectively. The estimates
show that the first order lag of y1 has significant positive correlation
y1, t with the current order lag of y1 at 1% probability level. The second
Yt = ⎡ y ⎤ order lag of y1has significant negative correlation with the current
⎣ 2, t ⎥
⎢ ⎦
order lag of y2 at 1% probability level. The first lag order of y2 has
where y1, t is the daily tickets sold and y2, t is the daily web search significant positive correlation with the first order lag of y1, and it has
queries of the village. Besides, there are four dependent variables in this significant positive correlation with the first order lag of y2 at 1%
study, probability level. The second order lag of y2 has significant negative
correlation with the current order lag of y1 at 1% probability level, and
x it has significant negative correlation with the current order lag of y2 at
⎡ 1, t ⎤
⎢ x2, t ⎥ 5% probability level.
Xt = ⎢
x3, t ⎥ The impacts of x1, x2, x3, x4 ony1 and y2 can also be found. x1 has no
⎢x ⎥
⎣ 4, t ⎦ correlation with either y1 or y2. x2 has significant positive correlation
with y2 at 5% probability level. x3 has significant positive correlation
where x1, t is a dummy variable representing the daily weather at the with y1 and significant negative correlation with y2 at 1% probability
village, x2, t representing the daily temperature at the village, x3, t a level. x4 has significant positive correlation with y1 at 1% probability
dummy variable representing weekends, and x4, t a dummy variable level.
representing public holidays.
The VAR (p) model can be expressed as Eq. (2), or two separate 5.3. The result of co-integration test
regression equations as Eqs. (3) and (4).
The Johansen co-integration test is applied to examine the long-
y b b y b b y
⎡ 1, t ⎤ = ⎡ c1 ⎤ + ⎡ 1,1,1 1,1,2 ⎤ × ⎡ 1, t − 1 ⎤ + ⎡ 1,2,1 1,2,2 ⎤ × ⎡ 1, t − 2 ⎤ term equilibrium of the independent variables. The results are shown in
⎢ y2, t ⎥ ⎣ c2 ⎦ ⎢ b2,1,1 b2,1,2 ⎥ ⎢ y2, t − 1⎥ ⎢ b2,2,1 b2,2,2 ⎥ ⎢ y2, t − 2 ⎥ Table. 4.
⎣ ⎦ ⎣ ⎦ ⎣ ⎦ ⎣ ⎦ ⎣ ⎦
x1, t There is a long-term equilibrium between y1and y2, and the equa-
⎡ ⎤
a1,1 a1,2 a1,3 a1,4 tion is shown as,
+⎡ ⎤ × ⎢ x2, t ⎥ + ⎡ ε1, t ⎤,
⎢ a2,1 a2,2 a2,3 a2,4 ⎥ ⎢ x ⎥ ε2, t
⎣ ⎦ ⎢ 3, t ⎥ ⎣ ⎦ y1 = 3.4114y2
x 4, t (2)
⎣ ⎦

5.4. The result of Granger causality test

Table 3
Selection of lag order.
Previously we have constructed zero hypotheses as H0: y2 does not
Lag AIC SC Granger cause y1, and H0: y1 does not Granger cause y2. The results of
the hypothesis are shown in Table. 5. And the results indicate the
0 33.86263 33.97103
Granger causality between y1 and y2 when the probability level is
1 31.60227 31.75402
2 31.43790* 31.63302* 0.005.
The findings can be referred that 1) y1 Granger causes y2,and vice
* Represents the minimum value of AIC or SC among different Lags. versa; 2) weather has neither correlation with actual arrivals of the

130
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
Table 4
The co-integration test.
Hypothesized no. of CE(s) Eigenvalue
None* 0.273084
At most 1* 0.025395
Cointegrating equation(s): Log likelihood 2445.196
Normalized cointegrating coefficients (standard error in parentheses)
y1 y2
1.000000 −3.4114
(0.2631)
Table 5
Granger causality test.
H0 Chi-square statistic P value Conclusion
y1 does not Granger cause y2 21.0055 0.0000 Rejected
y2 does not Granger cause y1 186.9238 0.0000 Rejected
village nor correlation with web search queries of the village; 3) tem-
peratures have no correlation with actual arrivals of the village but they
have significant positive correlation with web search queries of the
village; 4) weekends have significant positive correlation with actual
arrivals of the village and significant negative correlation with web
search queries of the village; 5) public holidays have significant positive
correlation with actual arrivals of the village; and 6) there is a 2-day lag
length indicating spontaneous domestic visitors (Taylor and Ortiz,
2009), tallying with the destination report that about 95% of the
tourists are domestic.
6. Implications and discussion
The theoretical contribution of this study lies in weather and tem-
peratures impact domestic tourism and travel motivations. Previous
research studies reveal the impacts of weather on tourism. Smith (1993)
finds that cultural tours are not that dependent on weather conditions.
Falk (2014) claims that warm weather is a particular pull factor for
tourists to select certain destinations. Thapa (2012) reveals that tourist
expectations of poor weather at a destination restrain their travels.
Agnew and Palutikof (2006) prove that the sensitivity of UK tourism is
influenced by weather variability. However, in this study, it is found
that weather does not impact domestic tourist visitations to cultural
destinations that have natural resources and that weather does not
impact web search queries about the destination. Because web search
queries reflect tourist travel intentions, it can be inferred that weather
does not impact tourist travel intention. In addition to Falk's (2014)
finding about temperatures' significant positive impact on domestic
tourist overnight stays, our finding reveals temperatures have sig-
nificant and positive impacts on domestic tourist intentions to visit
cultural destinations that have natural resources. On the contrary, the
practical contributions of this finding lie in the effectiveness of elec-
tronic destination marketing (e-marketing). Because temperatures sig-
nificantly and positively impact web search queries, an increase in web
search queries indicates an increase in temperature. Thus, the higher
the temperature is, the more active tourists will engage in internet
sharing or searching for information about the destination. Effective
destination e-marketing may occur when temperatures are high and
tourists are active on the internet.
The impacts of weekends uniquely show that tourist travel pre-
ferences and their destination based search behavioral preferences on
the internet. In this study, we set Monday through Thursday as week-
days and Friday through Sunday as weekends. Weekends are sig-
nificantly positively correlated with actual arrivals to the village and
significantly negatively correlated to web search queries about the
village. It can be referred that tourists prefer visiting cultural
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
Trace statistic 0.05 critical value Prob.**
123.3911 15.49471 0.0001
9.208817 3.841466 0.0024
destinations that have natural resources from Friday through Sunday
and actively search for destination information, prepare for their visi-
tations, or share travel experiences from Monday through Thursday.
Thus, this finding's practical contribution lies in destination manage-
ment and the effectiveness of destination e-marketing. DMOs should be
prepared with sufficient services and adequate management for week-
ends, including Friday, and effective e-marketing may occur from
Monday to Thursday.
The impact of public holidays on actual arrivals reveals challenges
faced in destination management. In this research, it is found that
public holidays have a significant positive correlation with actual
tourist arrivals to the village. It is vital for DMOs to predict tourist ar-
rivals to avoid overcrowding or tourist burst and conflicts, prevent
potential safety hazards, or provide sufficient services and proper
management, especially when they are organizing special events or
offering free entry during public holidays. Destination overcrowding
may even challenge public management because of free highway tolls
during public holidays. Attractive events, free destination entry, plus
free highway tolls may worsen the traffic jams on highways. Besides,
the short time lag (2 days) requires DMOs to be very sensitive in pre-
dicting, and flexible in managing and adjusting, their tactics.
This study was carried out based on one-year of daily data, so the
data does not show long-term lag length. However, to further explore
the reasons for such a short 2-day lag length, and to investigate the
destination tourist portfolio in the context of the short lag length, we
employ the Baidu Index to perform its user profile function. We iden-
tified two important clues about how to proceed with our research.
One, the Baidu Index lists the top 10 cities whose web search queries
about the destination hold the absolute amount of the total. Two, the
most concerning topics about the destination in Baidu Knows (the in-
ternet community of Baidu search engine) are issues related to self-
driving tours of the destination.
According to these two clues, we us web crawlers to identify a new
list of the top 10 cities about which internet users search for destination
information and produce the absolute number of web queries. The city
list and their corresponding numbers of daily web queries are presented
in Fig. 4, and these 10 cities are the main potential source cities of
visitors to the destination. Our findings about these 10 cities are dif-
ferent from those of Baidu Index, and our findings are more accurate
than those of Baidu Index because we integrate six keywords about the
destination while the result of Baidu Index only stems from one key-
word. However, we compared our city list with that on Baidu Index and
found that there was only a slight difference between our list and that
on Baidu Index because the final city of Badu Index is Kunming.
Fig. 5 shows cities' web query proportions. The biggest proportion of
web queries about the destination are made from Guiyang City, which
is about 200 km away from the destination, and Guiyang is the capital
city of Guizhou Province, in which the destination is located. The re-
maining nine cities are Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou,
Chongqing, Shenzhen, Nanning, Wuhan, and Hangzhou. Moreover,
these 9 cities have two things in common. On the one hand, Chengdu,
Chongqing, Nanning, Wuhan, and Guiyang are neighboring cities of the
destination. This explains why the most concerned topic on Baidu
131
Y.-Y. Liu et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134

Fig. 5. The destination's main potential source cities and their market shares, 2015.

Knows is self-driving tours to the destination. Thus, some potential
tourists are self-driving tourists from neighboring cities, which can
further explain the spontaneity of the tourists who visit the destination
and the short time lag length that tourists check information about the
route, the destination, and so on. Two days before their departure. On
the other hand, the other cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou,
Shenzhen, and Hangzhou, are very typical developed cities in China, so
the DMO launches commercial advertisements in these cities to draw
the attention of potential tourists. Besides, the DMO provides special
offers to tourists from Hangzhou because of theG20 conference in
Hangzhou, and the DMO intends to draw attention to this city. We can
also infer that the advertisement is working because web search queries
partly come from potential tourists' information searching behaviors.
Fig. 6 depicts the proportions of web queries made from the
neighboring cities and the distant but advertisement-targeted cities.
The proportion of web queries made from neighboring cities is slightly
higher than that of the distant advertisement-targeted cities. Although
the annual web search queries data cannot fully explain the reasons for
the short 2-day lag length, the spontaneity of self-driving tourist from
neighboring cities maybe one of the main reasons. Moreover, there
might be research limitations because the list only covers 10 cities.
Further research can be carried out for more detailed explanations of
the short time lag length and the potential tourist source cities.
Different from previous research studies, this study uses Baidu Index
to get clues for deeper information crawling while Huang et al. (2017)
directly import web queries data from Baidu Index. The main reason we
used a web crawler to get web query data is that Baidu Index does not
provide detailed web query data anymore. Instead, it only provides

Fig. 6. The destination's potential visitors from neighboring cities and distant cities, 2015

132
Y.-Y. Liu et al.
curves to show the trends of web queries. This phenomenon suggests
the importance of the destination Big Data warehouse's ability to cap-
ture internet-based data. On the contrary, we use Baidu Index but not
Google Trends because 95% of the destination's tourists are domestic,
and the Baidu search engine has a bigger market share in China and
Google Trends does (Yang et al., 2015). However, a study of Google
search data in forecasting can be as important as that of Baidu for
destinations that have more inbound tourists. One more comparison
between the findings of Huang et al. (2017) and this study was con-
ducted regarding time lag length. Studying the Forbidden City using
ADLM modeling, including Baidu keyword search queries as ex-
planatory variables, Huang et al. (2017) conclude a 1–2 day time lag
length. However, the Forbidden City, as one of the most famous and
interesting cultural heritage sites in China, attracts numerous inbound
tourists every day while very few tourists of Miao Village are inbound
tourists. Still, the time lag length of Huang et al. (2017) is almost as
short as that of our study. Although we apply different forecasting
methods than Huang et al. (2017), both studies are based on Baidu
search engine and the daily tourist arrivals to each destination. The
reason for the phenomenon may be that search engines might reflect
significant differences in the trip planning behaviors of different tour-
ists with different search languages and search engine preferences.
This study uniquely reflects the nature of Granger causality by
emphasizing the reciprocity between tourism destination arrivals and
web search queries of the destination, which extends the domain of the
current knowledge of tourism flow forecasting. The predictive power of
actual arrivals on web search queries may reflect that tourists searching
for destination information before their visitations and their willingness
to share their experiences and recommendations through web pages
after their visits. It can reflect the influences and effects of electronic
word-of-mouth (eWOM). It can also reflect tourist travel intentions and
questions about the destination.
This study exemplifies Big Data analytics in Destination
Management and Marketing (DMM), especially destination e-mar-
keting, which reveals that information is one of the destination assets,
and destination data is helpful for making sense of the destination
context, transforming and enhancing the values of destination services,
and strengthening destination competitiveness. However, the key
words election in this study relied on the Demand Mapping function of
Baidu Index, which may cause limitations due to the ignorance of some
other keywords. Although many works vex the accuracy of forecasting
models and the performances of different web search engines' fore-
casting functions, there are few works that focus on the predictive
power of web queries. Future research may be developed to investigate
the relationship between changes in numbers of tourist arrivals and
changes in web queries.
To conclude this study, we present factors that may influence
tourism arrivals and domestic tourists' intentions to visit cultural des-
tinations that have natural resources. First, weather does not impact
tourist arrivals to cultural destinations that have natural resources, and
it does not impact domestic tourists' intentions to visit the destination.
These findings are different from those of previous studies that reveal
that weather does impact tourism demand (Agnew and Palutikof, 2006;
Falk, 2014; Thapa, 2012), but it reinforces the finding that there is no
relationship between weather and tourism arrivals at a Canadian na-
tional natural park in peak summer (Scott et al., 2007). Second, tem-
peratures do not impact the numbers of tourist arrivals to cultural
destinations that have natural resources, but temperatures have sig-
nificant impacts on domestic tourist intentions to visit such destina-
tions. Finally, both weekends and public holidays significantly and
positively impact the numbers of domestic tourist arrivals to cultural
destination that have natural resources while weekends significantly
and negatively impact domestic tourists' intentions to visit such desti-
nations.
The originality of this study is exemplified through the utilization of
Big Data analytics in the tourism domain with a data capturing
133
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 130 (2018) 123–134
technique (the use of a web crawler), an analytical tool (VAR mod-
eling), analysis results (findings of correlation and Granger causality),
and further digging for potential reasons for the phenomenon of the
identified two-day time lag length. The research is developed based on
data from the studied DMO's Big Data warehouse. We further develop a
VAR model as an analytical tool with which to identify the correlations
in the data in a static manner. However, Big Data analytics should be
more than a Big Data warehouse. It should be based on information
technology with architecture of layers of data, a workflow of data
transformation within the business intelligence environment of the
destination data warehouse. It should be able to encompass various
analytical techniques and tools. These techniques and tools should be
constructed to have sophisticated functionalities to facilitate tourism
destination information integration and provide DMOs with insights
about how to meet tourist needs and future market trends. It should be
able to take advantages of cloud computing to support real-time ana-
lytical capabilities. The main trend of future tourism Big Data analytics
should be embodied in architecture with data organization and func-
tionalities to integrate data-capturing and data analysis with specific
goals, techniques, and tools. A shift to a more unstructured data cap-
tured by increasing use of sensors and remote monitors supporting
destination services are to be called for, and destination big data vi-
sualization is required, and we suggest that DMOs should adopt busi-
ness intelligence and develop Big Data analytics.
Thus, in the context of tourism Big Data analytics, the contributions
of this research are the following: We exemplify what tourism Big Data
(TBD) can be by linking traditional structured data (ticket information)
with unstructured data (web queries), and we demonstrate tourism Big
Data analytics (TBDA) as an architecture connecting information
technology for capturing data (web crawlers) and analyzing data with a
specific tool (VAR modeling) and how TBDA can serve DMOs by
matching the needs with specific information technology using the
correct analytical tool. Although we did not focus on data storage, this
research shows the systematic philosophy of Big Data analytics in
tourism domain.
Acknowledgments
We would like to extend our gratitude to the Destination
Management Organization (DMO) of Xijiang Thousand Households
Miao Village for their supports to the study. We acknowledge Heiko A.
von der Gracht (Associate Editor), and two anonymous reviewers for
their valuable suggestion and comments.
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Yuan-Yuan Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in Management at
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vilnius
University, Lithuania and a senior lecturer at School of
Management, Guizhou University, China. She received her
Master of Engineering, and Master of Business
Administration from Gävle University, Sweden. Her re-
search interests can be categorized into three major areas:
1) Big Data analytics in tourism; 2) Behavioral science in
tourism; and 3) Tourism products innovation.
Fang-Mei Tseng received her Ph.D. in management of
technology from National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
Currently, she is a professor at College of Management,
Yuan Ze University. Her research interest includes data
analysis, technology forecasting and technology assess-
ment, new product sales forecasting, and new product/
service development and performance evaluation.
Yi-Heng Tseng is an associate professor at College of
Management, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. He received his
PhD of Economics from Department of Economics, National
Taiwan University. His research interests cover Applied
Macroeconomics, Financial Market, and Investor's
Behavior. In recent years, his results of research were
published in the Journal of Financial Studies, Economic
Modelling, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Research in
International Business and Finance, and International Journal
of Tourism Research.