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Posts tagged ‘tourism’

28/03/2012

tdrlogoblack94

¿Qué trabajos genera el turismo en Barcelona?

Hoy Xavier Trias hablaba sobre la importancia del turismo para Barcelona, cifrando en un 16% el peso de este sector sobre el PIB de la ciudad. El peso del turismo sobre la ocupación no está tan claro. Por un lado, la hostelería supone alrededor del 7% (4º trimestre 2011) de los puestos de trabajo de la ciudad, mientras que el comercio (que en parte está directamente relacionado con el turismo) da trabajo al 15% de los ocupados. Así pues,  casi una cuarta parte de los puestos de trabajo de la ciudad son principalmente hoteles, bares, restaurantes y comercios.

El papel del turismo en el modelo productivo de Barcelona es un tema que está últimamente sobre la mesa, a raíz de la crisis y de las elevadas tasas de paro, pero también por el ahínco con el que el gobierno municipal está promocionando la capitalidad mundial del móvil para Barcelona y el supuesto efecto que va a tener como palanca hacia un cambio de modelo económico basado en sectores de mayor productividad y valor añadido.

En relación al turismo y la ocupación en Barcelona, desde The Data Republic nos hemos preguntado qué tipo de perfiles profesionales son actualmente más demandados por las empresas de este sector, qué formación piden a los candidatos o qué tipo de contratos ofrecen. Queríamos saber qué tipo de puestos de trabajo son los que se están generando en una de las principales industrias de la ciudad. Para ello, hemos analizado todas las ofertas de trabajo publicadas actualmente en Infojobs dentro del sector turismo y restauración, un total de 319, que representan alrededor del 5% de todas las ofertas publicadas para la provincia de Barcelona. Un porcentaje bastante bajo que con toda seguridad se explica por la característica estacionalidad de este sector. La semana que viene es Semana Santa y la mayor parte de las contrataciones deberían estar ya cerradas.
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March 28, 2012  

12/12/2011

tdrlogoblack94

Data 2.0 as an indicator to launch new tourism products

Cities, regions and travel-related businesses such as hotels or travel agencies are constantly looking for a way to differentiate from their competitors in order to attract new tourists, within an industry where the price factor is many times key for consumers to decide for a destination, a hotel or a travel package.

In addition to this, regions usually depend too much on certain destinations, lacking of diversification and therefore experiencing concentration of tourists in a few cities or even on a single one. That is the case of Catalonia, where Barcelona represents more than 50% of all the tourist pernoctations in Catalonia. Moreover, most of the tourists that visit some other places in Catalonia, usually visit Barcelona as well.

Therefore, we find that tourism  institutions need to put into value new destinations, in order to spread the profits and the impact of tourism all around their territory. Similarly, tourism businesses need to increase their competitiveness, by launching new products to diversify their portfolio and attract new customers.

In this context, data 2.0 appears as a new way to better understand tourist preferences. In our new project, Flickr stands out as an indicator that can show us what places within a region tourists like to visit the most, depending on the season or their nationality for example. Through this analysis, any business can offer new and demand-adapted travel packages to their customers.  Additionally, institutions can access to data about tourists travelling around their regions, something they usually lack, because many times these visits are simple getaways of one day, wihout hotel pernoctations. Again, data 2.0 happens to be an effective way to complement available data 1.0 or even to analyze preferences and habits where data 1.0 fails to do it.

With Barcelona’s tourists travelling around Catalonia, we have wondered where tourists visiting Barcelona like to go somewhere else in Catalonia, depending on the time of the year. This information aims to help all tourism business and institutions to better understand their current and potential customers.

Take a look at this project.

 

December 12, 2011  

10/06/2011

tdrlogoblack94
2 Comments

Tourists’ behavior patterns in Barcelona on the air: but still more to come

It took us a little bit more than we expected (bit busy around here), but today we are glad to announce that our project about tourists’ behavior patterns in Barcelona is on the air. Well, at least the first part of the final work we would like to complete, because we keep on working in a second part, which will be published very soon.

With this first part we have built two maps that gather more than 42,000 geolocated pics taken in Barcelona during a period of a year. One of the maps (built with Geocommons) provides with information about the major areas of tourists concentration all over the city. At the same time, we built 30 polygons for the Top 30 tourists attraction areas in Barcelona, so we can take a look at which of them are most visited. The other map (built with Google Fusion Tables) allows you to play with several filters in order to identify how behavior patterns changes according to variables such as the day of the week, the hour, the country of origin or the weather.

You can play with our maps by yourself but as a sign of how we understand data research at The Data Republic, we have published a report to bring you some of the major conclusions of the analysis, together with some graphs.

 

But we thought that this was not enough because we have many more questions still to answer. Now, we would like to analyze the impact of tourism over the occupation of public space all over the city. We want to compare the number of tourists in certain areas with variables such as population or number of businesses, so we can visualize which neighborhoods are above or below the average and, therefore, which have a greater or lesser degree of  saturation.

To be continued…

Read the complete project and play with the maps

 

June 10, 2011   2 Comments

24/05/2011

tdrlogoblack94

Barcelona’s 5-star hotels tourists: here we go with some conclusions

We finally ended our report on Barcelona’s 5-star hotels tourists and we bring you a complete analysis with major results and conclusions, freely available to anyone interested. We focused on some of the most interesting variables analyzed, such as seasonality, type of travelers or average ratings linked to tourists by country of origin, amont many others.

We really found some amazing facts, ie Italians do not stay at beach hotels or French are the largest nationality during the month of August. We also confirmed some of the most common topics on Barcelona’s tourists, like they really value the weather of the city and they prefer to travel with their couple. One more surprising thing, it seems that credit crunch has also impacted over luxury hotel’s tourists, as they give really low rating scores to the value for money criterion.

There are many conclusions that we have included in our report and many more that anyone can get by their own just taking a look at any of our more than 15 charts and graphs. We invite you to dive into Barcelona’s 5-star hotel tourists. Enjoy!

May 24, 2011  

07/05/2011

tdrlogoblack94
6 Comments

5-star hotels in Barcelona: some things about the data we are analyzing

We have just published some visualizations to show some features about the data we are analyzing for this project. For a total of 6,260 reviews during 2010, we have found some interesting things that describe the type of 5-star hotels tourists that visit Barcelona.

From the 23 5-star hotels in the Barcelona area, long-term hotels such as Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I and Gran Hotel Princesa Sofía are still the preferred, however W Barcelona has achieved to attract a high number of tourists since its opening. As W, those hotels located closer to the beach seem to be more successful.

In terms of country of origin, Spaniards represent the largest number of tourists staying at 5-star hotels in Barcelona, followed by French, British and Americans. We also wanted to analyze 5-star hotels tourists by type of visitor, concluding that couples is the major type (especially significant the number of young couples). After couples, people travelling alone and families with children are the most common types of tourists.

6,260 reviews about the 23 5-star hotels of the Barcelona area in 2010

Rating criteria is another important piece of information for our analysis. A key issue for consumers when booking hotels through the Internet is to analyze comments and reviews given by other people who already stayed at a certain hotel in this case. For that, criteria such as the location of the hotel, the staff or the facilities are rated and therefore comparable.

Finally, for The Data Republic the urban factor is of a great interest. Therefore, we want to evaluate the impact of this sort of visitors over the city, its neighborhoods and the quality of life of its citizens. Analyzing the concentration of tourists at certain areas and comparing it with other variables such as the number of stores, bars and restaurants or with the average income of residents would be one of our major aims in this project.

Take a look!

May 7, 2011   6 Comments

05/05/2011

tdrlogoblack94

What are the most frequented places by tourists on a rainy day?

There are dozens of businesses related to tourism, like travel agencies, hotels and restaurants or just small businesses in the retail sector.

Photo by herman van hulzen

For some local businesses such as souvenir and gifts stores, a restaurant, a cab company or a bicycle rental business, it is important to know where to find the tourists (their potential customers) in a city. We all know the great icons of each one: Times Square in NYC, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. But, are you sure you know all the city corners where you can find them? And moreover, do you know which ways and streets do they use to reach those spots?

Furthermore, there are different variables that may determine the behavior of tourists such as the day of the week (weekdays vs weekends), the weather (rain or sunshine) or their nationality and habits associated. Do you know what things do tourists do or what places do they go on a rainy day?, or on heatwave day at 30 º C? or on a Tuesday? and, do U.S. tourists visit the same places than the Italians?

We want to analyze the behavior patterns of tourists from public information online, and discover where they move, considering seasonal and climatic variables. Our first test will be based in Barcelona, ​​choosing a period of 365 days, between March 1st 2010 and March 1st 2011.

Let’s see what happens!

May 5, 2011  

30/04/2011

tdrlogoblack94

Barcelona’s 5-star hotels tourists: how the idea came

Although Barcelona is sometimes known as a tourist destination low cost, in 2009, 13.6% of tourists who stayed at Barcelona did it in 5-star hotels. However, the 5-star tourist is the great unknown, although its average spending is higher and, therefore, is a type of consumer that hotels and the foodservice and retail sectors are interested in attracting at a higher volume.

That is why at The Data Republic we wondered if we could profile these tourists, meet their consumption patterns by discriminating certain variables such as nationality or type of traveler thus obtaining an analysis that allows us to draw conclusions that help companies and institutions to know them better and to guide and optimize their products and services. But we are also interested in its impact on the city, not just its economy but on its public spaces, on the quality of life of their neighborhoods and also its neighbors.

Are there differences between the Spanish tourists, French or Americans staying in 5-star hotels in Barcelona? Are there patterns of seasonality in each case? It is location in the same hotel rated differently depending on whether the tourist is staying for business or for pleasure? Are the hotels rated better when they have a higher percentage of one nationality or another? Do tourists of the same nationality tend to stay in hotels in a particular area?

Our goal with this project is to provide answers to questions like these, through the analysis of the ratings and comments made of the 23 5-star hotels in Barcelona (including two in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat) during 2010 in the major booking websites (Atrápalo, TripAdvisor, Booking and Hotels.com).

At the same time, through the very visualization of raw data, we are more likely to obtain new questions and new answers that maybe we may not have arisen previously. That is the approach in which we based the The Data Republic’s methodology, analysis of public data lies significantly on the use of visualization as a strategy for analysis and not just to present conclusions.

April 30, 2011