Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Jason L. Stienmetz is earning his PhD in Business Administration at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. He is also a research coordinator at the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute at the University of Florida. His research interests include tourism metrics, big data analytics, and smart tourism.

Daniel R. Fesenmaier is a Professor in the Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management, University of Florida and Director of the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute. His main research and teaching interests focus on the use of information and the Internet in travel decisions, the use of information technology for tourism marketing and the development of knowledge-based systems for tourism marketing organizations. Dr. Fesenmaier is the author of a number of articles dealing with tourism marketing, advertising evaluation and information technology. He has co-edited five books and is co-founding editor of the international journal Tourism Analysis.

Abstract (150 Words)

The objective of this study is to evaluate the quality of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) data for the purpose of describing patterns of visitor movement within a tourism destination. Using a Southern United States tourism destination as a case study, this research quantifies visitor flow networks using both data mined from Instagram and data collected using a traditional online survey methodology and then conducts a series of statistical analyses to compare results. In doing so, this paper highlights the advantages of using VGI data for tourism research, but also draws attention to potential trappings.

Keywords: Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), Instagram, visitor network, digital footprint