Keynote presentation by prof. Lorenzo Cantoni, PhD, at the 5ème colloque international de l’Association ASTRES – Association Tourisme, Recherche et Enseignement Supérieur La Rochelle (France) - 9-12 juin 2015 Observer les touristes pour mieux comprendre les tourismes - Observing tourists to better understand tourism.

1. Information and communication
technologies to listen to tourists
Practices, opportunities and challenges
prof. Lorenzo Cantoni
Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano, Switzerland)
UNESCO chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites
IFITT – International Federation for Information Technologies and Travel & Tourism
lorenzo.cantoni@usi.ch ¦ @lorenzocantoni

2. OBSERVING AND LISTENING
A communication perspective
Communication is not “targeting” and online is reminding us
Eyes and ears

3. Onplace
& offline
Crowd
counting and
analysis
• Aerial
pictures /
videos
• Mobile
telephone
cells’
usages
Onplace
& online
Wifi spots
RFID ¦
iBeacons ¦
QR codes
Ad-hoc apps
based on GPS
and AR
Credit cards
Online
[& everywhere]
Messages
• Online Travel Reviews
• Social media and Media
sharing
• Online ethnogr. and surveys
Usages
• Navigation: webanalytics &
eye-tracking
• Transactions (esp. GDS / OTA)
A tentative map

4. Onplace
& offline
Crowd
counting and
analysis
• Aerial
pictures /
videos
• Mobile
telephone
cells’
usages
Onplace
& online
Wifi spots
RFID ¦
iBeacons ¦
QR codes
Ad-hoc apps
based on GPS
and AR
Credit cards
Online
[& everywhere]
Messages
• Online Travel Reviews
• Social media and Media
sharing
• Online ethnogr. and surveys
Usages
• Navigation: webanalytics &
eye-tracking
• Transactions (esp. GDS / OTA)
A tentative map

5. Wifi spots and Online
surveys:
Travelers in Lugano
(Switzerland)
• Picco-Schwendener, A., & Cantoni,
L. (2015). Tourists and Municipal
Wi-Fi Networks (MWN): The Case
of Lugano (Switzerland). In I.
Tussyadiah & A. Inversini (Eds.)
Proceeding of the International
Conference on Information and
Communication Technologies in
Tourism 2015. Lugano,
Switzerland, 3-6 February, 2015
(pp. 565-580).

6. Online Travel Reviews_1:
The reputation construct
Inversini, A., Cantoni, L., & Buhalis, D.
(2009). Destinations’ Information
Competition and Web Reputation. itt –
Journal of information technology &
tourism, 11, 221-234.
Marchiori E., & Cantoni, L. (2012). The
Online Reputation Construct: Does it
Matter for the Tourism Domain? A
Literature Review on Destinations’
Online Reputation. Itt – Journal of
information technology & tourism,
13/3, 139–159.
Marchiori, E., Cantoni, L., &
Fesenmaier, D. (2013). What did they
say about us? Message Cues and
Destination Reputation. In L. Cantoni &
Zheng Xiang (Eds.), Information and
Communication Technologies in
Tourism 2013. Paper presented at the
Proceedings of the International
Conference in Innsbruck, Austria,
January 22-25, (pp. 170-182). Berlin –
Heidelberg: Springer.

7. Online Travel Reviews_2:
Applying argumentation
theory
De Ascaniis, S., Cantoni, L., & Tardini, S.
(2010). Argumentation in Tourism: an
analysis of User-Generated-Contents
about Lugano (Switzerland). In Frans H.
van Eemeren, Bart Garssen, David
Godden, Gordon Mitchell (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 7th Conference of the
International Society for the Study of
Argumentation, SicSat, Amsterdam, June
29- July 2, (pp. 335-347).
Fedele, S., De Ascaniis, S., & Cantoni, L.
(2011). Destination Marketing and Users’
Appraisal: Looking for the reasons why
tourists like a destination. In Rob Law,
Matthias Fuchs & Francesco Ricci (Eds.),
Information and Communication
Technologies in Tourism 2011.
Proceedings of the International
Conference in Innsbruck, Austria, January
26-28, (pp. 151-163) Wien – New York:
Springer
De Ascaniis, S., & Cantoni, L. (2013).
Artistic and religious experiences in
online travel reviews on Saint Paul
outside the walls (Rome). Proceeding of
ICOT 2013, International Conference on
Tourism, Lymassol, Cyprus, 5-8 June, (pp.
160-173).

8. Social networks:
Pictures and texts shared
on SinaWeibo
Tu Hu, Nadzeya Kalbaska, Lorenzo
Cantoni (2013). A picturesque online
representation of Switzerland: a
research conducted on Chinese social
network Weibo. Webatelier.net
Report, April 2013.
Hu, T., Marchiori, E., Kalbaska, N.,
Cantoni, L. (2015). Online
representation of Switzerland as a
tourism destination: An exploratory
research on a Chinese microblogging
platform. Studies in Communication
Sciences 14(2), 136-143.

9. CONTENT, SENTIMENT, …
AND ARGUMENTATIVE ANALYSIS
Textual analysis as pioneer in big data
Be aware of different languages and cultures
Align narratives and deliver on your promises

10. Navigation: webanalytics_1

11. Navigation: webanalytics_2
• Three major families of info
– Users: numbers, flows, technology
used, from where, how long,
sex/age/interests…
– Referring sources: direct ¦ indirect:
search engine / regular website /
social network…
– Accessed content: most/least
visited ¦ landing/exiting pages ¦
how long on a page…
• What to do: managerial
implications
– Operate on the content (I pillar of
Online Communication Model)
• remove pages / sections never or
poorly accessed, optimize content for
human readers and search engines
(SEO)
– Operate on the structure or on the
publication outlet (II pillar of OCM)
• distribute contents on different
publication channels, reorganize
navigation, remove obstacles against
the completion of relevant processes
(e.g.: booking funnel)
– Operate on the users themselves
(IV pillar of OCM)
• put in place adequate promotional
activities (online marketing, online
PR, SEM), so to invite the right users
• An example: A/B testing

12. Navigation: webanalytics
A case
• Inversini, A., Cantoni, L., & Bolchini,
D. (2010). Presenting UsERA: User
Experience Risk Assessment Model.
In Ulrike Gretzel, Rob Law & Matthias
Fuchs (Eds.), Information and
Communication Technologies in
Tourism 2010. Proceedings of the
International Conference in Lugano,
Switzerland, February 10-12, 2010,
(pp. 99-110). Wien – New York:
Springer.
• Inversini, A., Cantoni, L., Bolchini, D.
(2011). Connecting Usages with
Usability Analysis through the User
Experience Risk Assessment Model: A
Case Study in the Tourism Domain. In
Aaron Marcus (Ed.), Design, User
Experience, and Usability [Pt II, HCII
2011, LNCS 6770], (pp. 283-293).
Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag
• Tardini, S., Adukaite, A., & Cantoni L.
(2014). How to do Things with
Websites. Reconsidering Austin’s
Perlocutionary Act in Online
Communication. Semiotica
2014(202), 425-437

13. DIFFERENT APPROACHES
Qualitative vs. quantitative
Big data vs. small data
Unsupervised vs. supervised vs. human analysis
Experiment vs. quasi-experiment vs. non experiment

14. Relevant issues_2
• Exact numbers and approximations
• Sentiment /emotion analysis (problems / loosing the
why)
• Giving-up explications in favor of data mining
• Stressing analytics over experience (e.g.: data roaming)
• Privacy
• Connecting nice reports with managerial decisions
• From Musil’s The Man Without Qualities to the
“quantified self”…
• Loosing contact with the actual experience (e.g.: “like”)

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16. Information and communication
technologies to listen to tourists
Practices, opportunities and challenges
prof. Lorenzo Cantoni
Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano, Switzerland)
lorenzo.cantoni@usi.ch ¦ @lorenzocantoni