Monitoring tourist digital footprint and tourist activities centers through geotagged and geolocated data: Alexandria city as a case study

The progression of technology has facilitated the examination of each user interaction and click on electronic devices. Tourists leave a digital “footprint” in most of their activities in the cities they visit; a significant amount of these data is geolocated. Studying the spatial and temporal preferences of individuals and patterns of movement represents a major factor that must be taken into account when designing urban land use policies, as contributions to the study of the spatial behavior of urban tourists in cities are still lacking. Therefore, the present study offers insights into user behavior in urban environments, facilitating the identification and examination of areas where there is a high concentration of tourist activities and enabling the identification of inactive zones within the urban area. The main aim of this research is to introduce a method for monitoring the level of tourist activity pulse in cities by examining User-Generated Content data. The novelty of this study is apparent in several key aspects: firstly, it concentrates on the intersections of eating, shopping, sightseeing, and nightlife activities in a chosen city for the case study; secondly, it presents a novel method for describing urban tourist activity centers and identifying areas of interest from the perspective of users,  utilizing Location-Based Social Networking data by employing spatial clustering analysis. Thirdly, the proposed reference framework incorporates LBSN data, serving as a supplementary tool for urban planning and decision-making processes aimed at improving city urban dynamics. In this sense, an exploratory study was carried out using a case-study approach in Alexandria, Egypt by employing a GIS program-QGIS, Prizren 3.32 version. The findings of this study have significant implications for tourism destination managers, urban planners and scientists interested in the analysis of urban dynamics, to orientating urban land-use planning and formulating tourism strategies that align with urban revitalization and regeneration to address imbalances in various areas.