Exploring the potential of Flickr User–Generated Content for Tourism Research: Insights from Portugal

Abstract The purpose of this research is to present and discuss the methods of identifying visitors and local population in tourism studies using geotagged photos from the Flickr social network, and differentiating them according to their country of residence. This study focuses on 1,434,268 photos taken in Portugal between 2010 and 2022 and uploaded by 31,286 Flickr users. Different approaches to cleaning the database, to distinguishing tourists from locals, and to identify their country of residence were employed and discussed. After data cleaning, the photos database corresponds to 1,144,981 photos shared by 29,890 users. Using the information provided in each user’s profile and the time zone, 12,144 users (41%) were classified as visitors and 2,659 users (9%) as locals. The monthly distribution of the percentage of photos uploaded by users classified as visitors coincides with the high season of tourist activity in Portugal. The distribution of users by country of residence coincides with the main inbound markets in Portugal: Spain, United Kingdom, France and Germany. Building on a country-wide case study, the contribution of this paper is a refined understanding of the use of Flickr usergenerated content in tourism studies, proposing a frame-work to facilitate all researchers to use this data source more frequently.