Affiliation:
1. University of Tasmania
Abstract
Tracking tourists using mobile phone data involves collating mobile phone call detail records (CDR), that can determine travel patterns of mobile phone users. The size of the data involved in this style of research is enormous; Xiao, Wang, and Fang (2019) received 600 – 800 million records per day when they used mobile phone data from Shanghai, resulting in over 10 billion mobile phone trajectories. However, mobile phone data does not provide precise travel itineraries. Rather, the data is a series of time-space points, showing where mobile phone users were when they made or received calls or text messages. Inferences are required to determine which mobile phone users are tourists, and when they entered countries or regions. However, the ubiquity of mobile phone use and the size of the data sets available to researchers means that this form of data can be used as a proxy for accommodation and visitation (Xiao, Wang, and Fang, 2019; Ahas et al., 2008; Ahas et al., 2007). Many significant findings regarding travel behaviour have emerged from this technique, including understandings of the impacts of seasonality, the impacts of nationality, and the impacts of events. This chapter will review these findings as well as the challenges that arise from the use of this data.