Mustafa Eren Yildirim, Murat Kaya, Ibrahim FurkanInce, Journal of Internet Computing and Services, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 11-17, Feb. 2022
10.7472/jksii.2022.23.1.11, Full Text:  HTML
Keywords: Tourist Profile Analysis, Unsupervised Approach, K-Means Clustering, Data Mining.

Abstract

Data mining is the task of accessing useful information from a large capacity of data. It can also be referred to as searching for correlations that can provide clues about the future in large data warehouses by using computer algorithms. It has been used in the tourism field for marketing, analysis, and business improvement purposes. This study aims to analyze the tourist profile in Turkey through data mining methods. The reason relies behind the selection of Turkey is the fact that Turkey welcomes millions of tourist every year which can be a role model for other touristic countries. In this study, an anonymous and large-scale data set was used under the law on the protection of personal data. The dataset was taken from a leading tourism company that is still active in Turkey. By using the k-means clustering algorithm on this data, key parameters of profiles were obtained and people were clustered into groups according to their characteristics. According to the outcomes, distinguishing characteristics are gathered under three main titles. These are the age of the tourists, the frequency of their vacations and the period between the reservation and the vacation itself. The results obtained show that the frequency of tourist vacations, the time between bookings and vacations, and age are the most important and characteristic parameters for a tourist's profile. Finally, planning future investments, events and campaign packages can make tourism companies more competitive and improve quality of service. For both businesses and tourists, it is advantageous to prepare individual events and offers for the three major groups of tourists.

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