Identification of tourist hot spots based on social networks: A comparative analysis of European metropolises using photo-sharing services and GIS

New sources of geolocated information, associated with big data and social networks, show great promise for geographical research, especially in the field of tourism geography. Photo-sharing services comprise one of these sources. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the potential of photo-sharing services for identifying and analyzing the main tourist attractions in eight major European cities: Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome and Rotterdam. Geotagged photographs on Panoramio were differentiated according to whether they had been taken by tourists or local residents, and their spatial distribution patterns were analyzed using spatial statistical techniques in a GIS. The results indicated the concentration and dispersion of photographs in each city and their main hot spots, and revealed marked differences between tourists' and residents' photographs, since the former showed higher spatial concentrations. In addition, differences were observed between cities; Barcelona and Rome presented a strong spatial concentration compared with London or Paris, which showed much greater dispersion.