The quintessential sun-and-beach European capital is not ready to be anchored in the success of its beaches, its climate, its nightlife and the great skyscrapers, factors that turned this Mediterranean city into a holiday pilgrimage for families , Young and old, not only from the national territory, but also from other European latitudes. Now, you want to be a Smart Tourist Destination.
The capital of the Costa Blanca has become one of the pioneer destinations in the effective use of Big Data technologies to aid decision-making, both tactical and strategic This initiative has launched VisitBenidorm together with Hosbec and with the collaboration Of the Valencian Agency of Turisme and the Patronato Costa Blanca, is already giving its first fruits.
The main objective of this initiative is to better understand the composition and behavior of tourists who visit the city to better adapt the offer to their needs, looking for new market niches and trends, and use that knowledge to anticipate the tourist dynamics in the city. Which promotional management is concerned.
Thanks to the Mabrian tool that applies advanced techniques of natural language processing and artificial intelligence on huge amounts of data related to visitor behavior, which in English is beginning to be called Behavioral Data. Among the sources used are the semantic analysis of the hotel reviews of the entire plant of the destination, information on air connectivity from the main airports nearby, Benidorm's tourism mentions on social networks, safety perceptions and even climatological information and currency changes . As complicated as this description may seem, the control panels that have been made available to Visit Benidorm are very easy to interpret and have allowed total autonomy to the promoter body to turn this information into tourist intelligence, contributing much value to the management of the destination .
From these channels of communication, interesting conclusions are drawn and show some striking aspects that until now had not been taken into account in traditional tourism analyzes.
For example, in Benidorm during the month of July, the LowFestival was the element of attraction most commented on the networks, agglutinating 35% of them. It is striking how most of the comments were made early in the morning, when the Lowers had returned to their resting places and Sunday was the day of greatest media impact.
Other highly commented elements are the theme parks, as well as the beaches, something that comes within the expected and the traditional.
The first surprise we took to see the mentions of American tourists talking about Benidorm, which shows their presence in the area. With a majority between 25 and 45 years, the elements that have a greater impact are the sun and beach (37%), nightlife (16%), family products (14%) and water sports (11%).
The different tourist products are valued and indexed by the tool of 'listening' in the RRSS, and we observe how practically all the tourist attributes of Benidorm grow in their perception, with a special importance of the familiar product.
The second surprise of the analysis we take when we observe that Benidorm begins to link in social networks with cultural tourism, mainly by Spanish and British tourists, between 25 and 45 years, and equally between genders, men and women.
Tourist arrivals data are also available at the Alicante airport, and their ranking by destination of origin.
London airport is the one that carried more passengers to Alicante during July, with more than 55,000 followed very closely by Manchester with 54,000. Birmingham, Amsterdan, Oslo and East Midlands are among them, completing the Stockholm, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle and Brussels lists.
For days of arrival, the air traffic of the airport and the greater concentration of passengers during the 31 days of July has concentrated in Saturdays, Mondays and Sundays.
And finally, the July BigData report sets out an interesting riddle. The Italian tourist only represents 0.2% of overnight stays in hotel accommodation, but at the same time they are the fourth nationality that has more records in Social Networks on Benidorm, where do they sleep?
Benidorm dignifies tourism management with the application of technology, with the aim of increasing customer loyalty, expanding products and creating new experiences for tourists. All this encompassed within the challenges marked by Visit Benidorm. The final objective is to know the tourist and know himself (as a destination), in order to be able to make those decisions that allow to increase tourist satisfaction and improve his stay. With the purpose of generating information to turn it into knowledge and in this way to improve Benidorm in an integral way.
The city has become a laboratory of innovation and technology. But the latter alone does not make a tourist destination smart. "We are aware that technology must be accompanied by a process of change at all levels, starting with the tourism strategy and the tourist intelligence that should lead to a new model of innovative, accessible and sustainable destination," explains Leire Bilbao
