About the Project
LXTOUR-IMPACT – Perception and Economic Impact of Tourism in Lisbon
Coordinated by NOVA IMS, the LXTOUR-IMPACT project responds to the pressing need for tools that can support more effective tourism management and strategic planning in urban environments. The initiative aims to quantify the economic contributions of tourism in Lisbon and uncover patterns in visitor experiences by combining advanced artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and economic modelling techniques.
The project is pioneering in its integration of sentiment analysis of online reviews and economic impact assessment through a data-driven platform. By leveraging data from Tripadvisor, social media, and economic indicators, the project produces real-time insights on how tourism affects local businesses in gastronomy, hospitality, and cultural attractions. Particular emphasis is placed on detecting signs of over-tourism and guiding public policies accordingly.
The research is organised around the CRISP-DM methodology and unfolds in five core phases: context and data understanding, data preparation, modelling and evaluation, deployment, and dissemination. These include the development of bots for large-scale data collection, use of machine learning and pre-trained NLP models such as BERT or GPT, and implementation of clustering, predictive modelling, and econometric analysis.
As coordinator, NOVA IMS leads the development of:
- Automated agents for structured and unstructured data collection from online platforms and economic sources.
- Sentiment analysis and pattern recognition modules to capture visitor perceptions and detect trends across time.
- Economic models to assess tourism’s contribution to revenue, employment, and business growth in Lisbon.
- A dashboard system enabling real-time visualisation of tourism dynamics and simulation-based decision support.
- A dedicated project website and workshops to engage stakeholders, including the Lisbon City Council, local businesses, and the public.
In doing so, the project not only advances state-of-the-art applications in AI and data science but also bridges research and practice by directly informing municipal tourism policy and sustainable urban development.
