How Reliable Is Social Media Data? Validation of TripAdvisor Tourism Visitations Using Independent Data Sources

Abstract

AbstractSocial media data has been rapidly applied as alternative data source for tourism statistics and measurement in recent years due to its availability, easy collection, good spatial coverage at multiple scales, and rich content. However, frequent criticism towards the social media is the bias towards the population of social media users leading to unknown representativeness of the entire population. The purpose of this study is to cross-validate the reliability and validity of visitation pattern of tourist destinations retrieved from the social media using alternative independent data sources. The primary social media data is TripAdvisor reviews of Florida attraction points, restaurants, and hotels. The inferred visitation pattern was validated against two independent datasets: cellphone tracking data and official visitor surveys. The validity was explored in tourist origins, destinations, and travel flows. Repetitively, travel patterns inferred from the social media were found strongly correlated to those from cellphone tracking and surveys. The visitation data obtained from social media was concluded to be reliable and representative.