Extração de dados do site Tripadvisor como suporte na elaboração de indicadores do turismo de Minas Gerais: uma iniciativa em Big Data

Abstract

The research aims to study the phenomenon called “Big Data” and the possibility of using free web data extraction tools (web scrapers) to help the development of indicators about tourist attractionsinMinas Gerais State (Brazil) registered in the world’s most famoustravel-related websiteknown as “TripAdvisor”. Therefore,we carried outa brief study of themessuchas information sciences and the role of web-based information extraction tools. After theliterature review, we used a web scraper tool calledImport.io to collect data from TripAdvisor, searching for key information of Minas Gerais’ tourist attractions and turning them into a structured database. Thus, it was possible toextractinformation such as the division of tourist attractions by categories from the state and municipalities, the number of evaluations,visitors' profiles, satisfaction levels,and the period ofmost visits ateach of the attractions. We expectthis methodologytoassist the state authorities and municipalities to create performance indicators form data extraction that is already available on the web at low cost, improving actions and ensuring an improvement in the use of public resources in tourism policies.