Classifying multi-destination trips in Austria with big data

Multi-destination trips are interesting for research in order to see which destinations are combined into one leisure trip. The aim of this study is to classify multi-destination trips in Austria based on geotagged photos on Flickr. The study sample includes tourists in Austria who visited at least two different cities based on the geolocations of their photos. The results revealed three types of multi-destination trips: (1) single destination trips (57%); (2) base camp trips (30%); and (3) regional tour trips (13%). Furthermore, cluster analysis was conducted to categorize the cities. The first cluster covers the eastern part of the country, which includes larger cities such as Vienna and Graz, and the second cluster refers to the western part of Austria. Practical implications includes creating joint marketing campaigns and new tourism products such as hiking trails between cities in the same cluster. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.