On the afternoon of April 28, 2026, Dr. Jinyan Chen, Research Assistant Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, was invited by the Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management (THEM) programme at Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University (BNBU) to deliver an academic talk at CC-326, titled "Big Data Analytics in Tourism: A Journey through Concepts to Advanced Applications."

The talk began with an introduction to the four core characteristics of big data: volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Drawing on diverse data sources in tourism research, including social media, GPS devices, and online reviews, Dr. Chen helped students build a systematic understanding of big data in the tourism context.

On tourist mobility, Dr. Chen drew on real research cases, including tracking the global movement of Chinese tourists via Weibo and predicting visitor routes during the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, to demonstrate how heat maps, network analysis, and trajectory clustering can provide actionable insights for destination management.

On text data analysis, Dr. Chen introduced sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and destination competitiveness assessment. Using Hong Kong tourism as a case study, she analysed user-generated data from Xiaohongshu and Dianping, applying a dynamic McKinsey Matrix to reveal shifting competitive attributes over time. The findings identified food and attractions as the attributes visitors valued most, offering data-driven support for destination strategy.

The talk also highlighted Dr. Chen's ongoing research, including a project funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council focused on tourism spatial integration in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, as well as several grant applications centred on mega-event visitor mobility and regenerative tourism, demonstrating the broad potential of big data analytics in regional tourism policy.

The session concluded amid lively discussion. Dr. Chen's insights offered students a valuable academic perspective on the intersection of big data and tourism research, and reflected the THEM programme's ongoing commitment to advancing frontier scholarship in hospitality and tourism education.

Dr. Jinyan Chen is a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on the application of social media and big data analytics to destination management and tourist experience. She serves as Associate Editor of Tourism Geographies and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Travel Research.

Text: Wang Weilu

Photos: Wang Weilu

Editor: Wang Weilu