After two years of planning and 18 months of intensive writing and editing, the new book "Applied Data Science in Tourism: Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Approaches, and Applications" was published this week by Springer. The 650-page work is the 19th and most comprehensive book project to date by Roman Egger, Head of Research and eTourism at the Innovation and Management in Tourism programme.
Access to big data has led to a paradigm shift in the tourism research landscape. Big Data enables a new form of gaining knowledge, but at the same time shakes the epistemological foundations and requires new methods and approaches to analysis. It enables interdisciplinary cooperation between computer science, social sciences and economics and complements traditional research approaches.
The new book by Roman Egger, Head of Research and eTourism at the Innovation and Management in Tourism programme, offers a broad basis for practical application: from data science approaches such as machine learning and text mining to social network analysis, which are essential for interdisciplinary tourism research. Each method is presented in detail, considered analytically, its advantages and disadvantages are weighed and typical fields of application for tourism are presented.
The correct methodological application is presented with a "how-to" approach together with code examples, so that a wide readership of researchers, practitioners and students entering the field is addressed.
Parallel to the book, the website http://datascience-in-tourism.com was set up. In addition to information about the book, it also contains links to the code examples and a blog where current research projects and news on the topic will be published in the future.
"This publication can also be seen as an anchor point for the further development of the Master's programme, because the tourism industry is also becoming increasingly data-driven. In this way, the Master's students of the Innovation and Management in Tourism programme will in future also be empowered in the direction of "data analysis as the basis of strategic management", Roman Egger states.