Special interest tourism is not so special after all: Big data evidence from the 2017 Great American Solar Eclipse

Abstract

This study puts to empirical test a major typology in the tourism literature, mass versus special interest tourism (SIT), as the once-distinctive boundary between the two has become blurry in modern tourism scholarship. We utilize 41,747 geo-located Instagram photos pertaining to the 2017 Great American Solar Eclipse and Big Data analytics to distinguish tourists based on their choice of observational destinations and spatial movement patterns. Two types of tourists are identified: opportunists and hardcore. The motivational profile of those tourists is validated with the external data through hypothesis testing and compared with and contrasted against existing motivation-based tourist typologies. The main conclusion is that large share of tourists involved in what is traditionally understood as SIT activities exhibit behavior and profile characteristic of mass tourists seeking novelty but conscious about risks and comforts. Practical implications regarding the potential of rural and urban destinations for developing SIT tourism are also discussed.