“DigItalyExperience: Tourism in Italy in the era of Big Data”, the social research Almawave, analyzed the sentiment of travelers on 18 million conversations online. Instagram exceeds Twitter and grows attention for Campania and Sicily. Tourists looking for quality
Rome, 5 October 2017 – Digital transform tourism. The interest in shared accommodation is becoming increasingly established, with a 7% growth compared to 2016. Connection is fundamental: 78% of social shares are made during the trip and influence choices. These are some of the significant data from “digItalyExperience”, the second edition of the Italian tourist image report in the world created by Almawave, the AlmavivA Group’s technological innovation company, one of the main Italian players in the CRM sector, Big Data, Knowledge Management and Customer Experience, presented at EYCapri 2017.
The Report is the result of a Social Web analysis on the users of tourism services that monitored over 18 million comments in Italian and English, highlighting over 2 thousand concepts related to 30 topics of the tourism ecosystem: the dynamic photography of an extraordinary resource for our economy, in which sustainable tourism is associated with a search for Italian excellences, especially in the food and wine sector. During the trip the search for emotional experience and integrated offer prevails: the so-called package with sporting adventure, educational or creative play experience (cooking course, wine tasting combined with knowledge of the territory). But foreigners also seek luxury and choose the beautiful country to celebrate a fairytale wedding.
As Valma Sandei, Managing Director of Almawave underlines, “The digital tourist offer is strategic because the travel choices are made in real time by consulting the web and sharing the emotions: so much so that 78% of social conversations about places and destinations happens during the experience. In the era of Tourism 4.0, the social channels help to find information on the places visited and to decide, focusing on quality. The analytics allow monitoring the needs and sentiment of tourists in the various phases of the journey, contributing to the evolution of offer and services “.
INSTAGRAM SUPERA TWITTER
The analysis gathered conversations on Twitter and Instagram – 54% in Italian and 46% in English – from 1 August to 15 September, verifying the primacy of the use of Instagram with a post increasing 3% compared to 2016.
ENOGASTRONOMY IN POLE
In addition to posting information or photos of localities (55.3%), even before the accommodation facilities (13.9%) the focus is on Italian wines and foods (19.5%). Campania and Sicily, compared to the data collected in 2016, are more cited in the summer of 2017, respectively, by 5% and 3%. In particular, Sicily registers a boom of interest in English-language posts, from 24% last year to 57% of total conversations regarding the island.
ALTERNATIVE MOBILITY
Attracts rural, environmental and sustainable tourism. The search for shared transport is increasing, the alternative mobility offer of Milan and Florence has been appreciated. Bike sharing and high speed upgrading to Southern Italy and Puglia in particular are very welcome.
THE CITIES OF ART
Among the cities at the center of the conversations, Rome collects 18.9% of the comments, strongly polarized between love for the beauty of the places (monuments, events and trattorias) and disappointment for the reception (services, transport and security). Milan and Venice follow suit with equal merit (13.6% of the citations), with a clear predominance of positive sentiment. The capital of Lombardy likes artistic inspiration (fashion, architecture and design), innovation and functionality, less air quality. Della Serenissima, the unique charm of the canals and gondolas, albeit with negative comments on the attack of hit and run tourists and the cumbersome cruise ships.

Read an abstract of the “Tourism 4.0” analysis

During Vinitaly 2017 there was a boom in conversations on Twitter, Facebook and Google+: more than 42 thousand monitored, with a peak of social exchanges on the second day of the opening of the international exhibition of wines and spirits, in Verona. The hashtag # Vinitaly2017 has been shared 20.750. Sentiment is extremely positive: close to 40%.
Thanks to Almawave’s proprietary natural language and Big Data analysis platform, the survey gathered all the interactions related to the event from 3 to 12 April on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, in six languages: Italian, English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. The total data collected was analyzed from a quantitative point of view, while the sentiment evaluation was extracted in the Twitter area, whose interactions represent 98% of the total.
Chianti is the most cited, with 9% interest compared to 6.4 of Franciacorta and 3.9 of Barolo, followed by Pinot, Lambrusco, Trento doc, Etna, Amarone, Valpolicella and Grillo. The Region that attracts the most attention is Sicily (12%), followed by Puglia (10.6%), Veneto (7.7%), Tuscany (7.4%) and Sardinia (6.8%).
This is the overview emerged from the survey conducted by Gambero Rosso and Almawave on social media channels in the week of Vinitaly 2017: the largest food-and-wine publishing house in Europe and the AlmavivA technological innovation company, the leading ICT Group in Italy in agrifood, they have shared their skills to create a global overview of what emerges from the social universe on topics, opinions and trends related to wine, one of the recognized Italian excellence.
The social analysis linked to Vinitaly 2017 confirms a continuous and widespread attention for the food and wine sector, which best expresses the quality of Made in Italy, a heritage that for over thirty years Gambero Rosso has been telling and promoting every day through publishing, events, training, consulting. At the same time, the survey underscores the partnership project between Almawave and Gambero Rosso with the aim of enhancing the reality, culture and perception of Italian food and wine.

 From the quantitative and qualitative study of the Big Data collected, the opinions and perceptions of travelers on the travel experience, expressed spontaneously and without filters, were extracted. Over 90% of the conversations are about the destination and the story of the lived experience: over 21 million messages on Twitter and Instagram channels collected in the period from 1 August to 15 September 2016, in Italian (45.9% of messages) and in English (54.1%), over two thousand identified concepts and a set of keywords divided into over twenty areas of analysis (locations, accommodation, events, sports, food and wine, transport and intermodality).

Social interaction in 72.9% of cases takes place during the journey itself: they tell and comment on experiences while they are living. This explains why connectivity is such an important element and the widespread and unavoidable Wi-Fi request: before the trip (24.9% of social interaction cases) we connect to collect information and book; after the trip (2.2%) to leave opinions on the structures.
Go to a summary of the presentation:digItalyExperience_ComunicazioneAW

The people of Twitter often interact and interact on Italy and the topics of discussion on the Bel Paese are mainly those related to sport (40%). Following, tourism (15%) and politics (8%) and, continuing, events (6%), economy (6%), social issues (5%), media (4%) and others: a survey that takes a photograph of Italy through the study of the content of about 7.8 million tweets in 6 languages ​​(English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian), analyzed with statistical algorithms. 24 hours a day constant monitoring of all the Tweets on the theme of Italy generated throughout the world from September 24th to October 28th 2013, organized in 1,300 concepts and 14 categories.
English is the language in which most conversations are recorded (42% of the total), followed by Italian (32%), Spanish (18%), French (5%), Portuguese (2%), while interactions in German represent only 1%.
The approach of the Germans to our country on the social network differs from the rest of the world, since the conversations refer mostly to tourism (25% of the total in German) and to politics (21%), while in all other languages ​​the favorite subject is by far the sport (44% of conversations in English and 48% in French).

Monitoring of Twitter conversations on the Italian Song Festival.
Over 1 million conversations on Twitter, but with a decreasing trend after the first evening boom, in line with the television share.
For the second consecutive year, the social networks anticipate the real winner of the Festival: Arisa the most tweeted (16.1%) during the week.
Marco Mengoni is the most commented guest on Twitter.
There were 1,162,370 tweets about the Festival that were analyzed during the week of Sanremo, starting from the early evening: a volume of “social” interactions that confirms the growing importance of the phenomenon of the second screen, or the progressive integration between television, traditional screen to watch what happens, and Twitter, second screen on which to comment in real time what you see on TV and develop conversations among users about the content.
The trend of conversations was however waning – in line with what happened with the television ratings – after the boom of the early evening, which alone has catalyzed about 320,000 tweets, about twice the average compared to other evenings. Even the final on Saturday totaled only 153,813 tweets, a clear decrease compared to the 247,349 comments made in the 2013 edition.
But the people of Twitter, for the second consecutive year, was able to anticipate the final outcome of the singing event: before the start of the final, it was indeed Arisa the most popular in terms of online buzz among the Champions in the race .
A result that Arisa then obviously confirmed and strengthened after Saturday’s triumph, resulting overall first for interactions on the social network (16.1% of the total), taking second place Noemi (15.1%) and the third Francesco Renga ( 10.1%). Fourth place for Raphael Gualazzi, fifth Renzo Rubino and sixth Giusy Ferreri.
However, Arisa has not succeeded in undermining Giusy Ferreri from the supremacy of followers on the official Twitter profiles of the competitors, resulting second with over 226,865 followers (+5,759 compared to the beginning of the Festival), compared to the 315,197 followers of Ferreri.
Among Italian guests, comments focused on Marco Mengoni (14.2%), followed by Claudio Baglioni (12.8%), Renzo Arbore (12.7%), Raffaella Carrà (12.5%) ) and gradually others. Laetitia Casta was the most tweeted international guest (30.7%), followed by Rufus Wainwright and Cat Stevens.
The Almawave survey, in collaboration with the Ugo Bordoni Foundation, was aimed at photographing the “social” positioning of the most popular television program in Italy and was carried out as part of a partnership for the development of highly advanced solutions and innovative in this field between Almawave and the Bordoni Foundation itself.
Social Analysis Sanremo 2014 focused in particular on the monitoring of online buzz, that is, what we talk about the transmission, the conductors, the singers in the race and the guests, identifying all the quotes on Twitter (mentions, hashtags, related terms). In addition, an analysis of sentiment on the Festival’s characters and on the emerging themes of the same was carried out, through a statistical estimate of the size of the categories: tweets with positive, negative and neutral opinions.
The analysis took place through the continuous real-time collection of tweets from 7:00 am on February 18th until 7:00 am on February 23rd, with near real-time processing of results.

Over 251 million tweets in 6 languages ​​(Italian, English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German). Tweets were identified in 2,300 keywords and involved two periods: at the beginning of 2015, from January to March, and in the second half of the year, from September to November.
In the Italian language, during the whole year, the “crisis” themes (24.5% of the total tweets) and “work” (16.4%) remained the central topics. Between the first and second part of the year, however, the theme “economic growth” rises, from 13.1% to 16.2%, that of “consumer propensity” goes from 10.1% to 14%. There is less discussion of “taxes” (from 16% to 15.2%) and “access to credit” (from 14.5% to 11.3%).
Among the most tweeted macro-economic topics in the world, the “consumer propensity” appears in first place, with 25.6% conversations in all languages, compared with 14% in Italian. The theme “access to credit” generally involves 25.1% of the tweets, compared with 11.3% in Italian. The topic “economic growth”, on the other hand, finds greater interest in Italian: 16.2% in Italy, versus 15.1% in other languages. Only 13.2% speak of “Lavoro” (16.4% in Italy) and 10.7% of “Taxes” (15.2% in Italy). Even the “Crisis” is the subject of only 8% of conversations, compared to 24.5% in Italy!