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Almawave: the results of the #italianelmondo survey on the topic of “Twitter and winter tourism”

Almawave: the results of the #italianelmondo survey on the topic of “Twitter and winter tourism”

04-02-2014

Big Data Social surveys are an important tool for providing a snapshot of today's world

​04/02/2014

Madonna di Campiglio tops the league table of most tweeted holiday destination (6.2% of tweets), followed by Cortina and Misurina. Trentino Alto Adige ranks first among the regions, although Umbria and Marche also have good rankings as skiing destinations. Among the sports, surprisingly, ice hockey (34.7%) generated more tweets than skiing (30%), and snowshoe hiking has made it into the rankings. Mountain shelters are one of the preferred types of accommodation. Lake Sauris is one of the most beautiful natural spots in Italy, according to tweeters.

The “#italianelmondo” survey, conducted by Almawave and based on the continuous monitoring of millions of tweets, focuses in the last few weeks on winter holidays, providing an insight into a branch of tourism that is very much tweeted about and which holds many surprises.

The survey, in fact, offers a snapshot of Italy and this particular topic, based on the study of about 22.3 million tweets in 6 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), analyzed using statistical algorithms. A constant round-the-clock monitoring of all the tweets talking about Italy generated throughout the world, from 24 September to 22 January 2014, grouped into 2,300 concepts and 14 categories. On this occasion the focus was on winter tourism, in consideration of the season, based on the analysis of over 8.8 million tweets over the period from 27 November to 22 January.

The most tweeted about subjects are the weather (68.4%), followed at a distance by sports (12.1%) and holiday destinations (11.5%).

Concerning holiday destinations, the most tweeted about regions are the northern regions, with Trentino Alto Adige (30.9% of tweets) topping the list, with more than double the amount of tweets compared to the runners-up: Veneto (12.3%), Lombardia (11.6%), Valle d’Aosta (11.4) and Piemonte (10.6%). The number one region in the Appennines is Abruzzo, with 9.5% of tweets.

The competition between the single locations is much closer, with Madonna di Campiglio (6.2%) ranking first, followed by Cortina d’Ampezzo (5.8%), also thanks to the power cut over Christmas, and then Misurina (4.4%), Clavière, Monti Sibillini (surprisingly), Cogne, Castel del Monte, Livigno and Sestrière.

The most tweeted about sports are ice hockey (34.7%), surprisingly first, while skiing is only second (30%). Hockey is tweeted about mostly in English and Spanish, due to events such as the World University Games in Trentino and the Italian Hockey Championships, but also in connection with Vitali Kutuzov, the former AC Milan striker and currently goalkeeper in the amateur hockey team Sesto San Giovanni. Way behind are rock climbing (7.2%), hiking (7.2%), snowboard, ice skating, tobogganing, but also an up and coming sports such as snowshoe hiking (1.6%).

The survey also covered the different types of accommodation – the most popular being mountain shelters (41.9%), followed by chalets (25.3%) and Alpine farmhouses (12.1%) – and the tourist facilities and services, such as ski runs (25.6%), which ranks well ahead of chairlifts (10.1%) and skiing facilities in general (9.0%). One peculiar result is that the old-fashioned ski lift (7.2%) is much more popular on Twitter than ordinary cable cars (4.9%) and "ovovie" (egg-shaped cable cars) (4.2%).

Events that buzz on Twitter are a great means for boosting tourism, such as the World University Games in Trentino Alto Adige (71.9%) and the Senior Women's Foil World Cup (11.3%) to be held in Turin at the end of March. Other tweets are about the Ski Sunrise (4.3%) and the Ciaspalonga (snowshoe hiking) on Monte Gazza (3.7%).

The multi-language survey also offers a number of surprises, such as the fact that skiing isn't associated only with the Alps and the Dolomites, but also with the Monti Sibillini mountain range in Umbria and Marche, in central Italy; the most popular Italian skiing resort among Spanish tweeters is Cortina d’Ampezzo, while for the Germans Tuscany is not just a favored destination for its art, food and beaches, because many tweets are about where to ski in the region. Lake Sauris, in Friuli Venezia Giulia, is considered by tweeters one of the most beautiful nature spots in Italy.

Last but not least, the economic crisis and rising prices have made it into the holiday tweets, with many tweeting about the 3% toll rise between the Mont Blanc and Frejus tunnels.

"Big Data Social surveys are an important and precious tool for providing a snapshot of today's world" - said Valeria Sandei, CEO of Almawave, Almaviva Group's innovation company - "because they show us a real world on the move, offering unexpected insights and enabling us to make useful forecasts for interpreting people's expectations and managing the future. This is especially true with regard to tourism".

"Almawave solutions analyze and put into perspective increasing volumes of diverse and complex data, in real time, and it is precisely this great variety of sources that supports the value of the service - Ms. Sandei continued. The #italianelmondo survey proves how crucial Big Data Social and Advanced Analytics solutions have become to understand reality and transform business, improving the competitive edge of private companies and public entities".