RWU graduate receives "JUST!" award from the Zeppelin Youth Foundation

Weingarten - Is it possible to draw conclusions about the user's personality and travel preferences based on Instagram content? Luca Koroll, a graduate of the Digital Business master's program at RWU, asked himself this question and worked on the topic in his master's thesis. This thesis has now been awarded first prize in the "JUST!" award from the Zeppelin Youth Foundation in the university project category.

Tourism and social media

"Specifically, my work is about investigating whether there is a connection between the personality, travel interests and self-published content of people on Instagram. The central question is whether it is possible to use Instagram data to determine the personalities of users and whether their travel interests depend on this," explains Luca Koroll. The thesis is entitled: "Determining personality through social media and its impact on travel preferences". For example, how often per year do introverts travel? Which accommodation do they stay in? What kind of vacation do they prefer: more relaxation and wellness or more action in amusement parks or camping and hiking?

Tourists regularly use social media to document, experience and reconstruct their trips. This content has a major influence on decision-making processes (for example, where to go on the next vacation), as social media is also used as a source of information in the initial phase of travel planning.

User-generated content as research data

For his work, Luca Koroll analyzed over 688,000 Instagram posts (so-called user-generated content) and the associated metadata from the Lake Constance region. The different personalities can be clustered into five types: overcontrolled, resilient, confident, reserved and undercontrolled.

The results show that the composition of personality types varies at different locations on Lake Constance, which is highly relevant for tourism research and planning. From the analysis, it can be concluded that certain locations in the region are preferred by certain personality types. By determining the personality of tourists, the respective travel behavior as well as underlying motivations and motives can be understood. It also shows that personality has an influence on travel preferences and behavior.

Insights for tourism marketing

The work was supervised by Dr. Wolfram Höpken, Professor of Business Informatics at RWU. "An excellent piece of work with great relevance for tourism marketing," summarizes Wolfram Höpken. The results can help to optimize existing tourism offers, develop new offers and improve tourism marketing by understanding the target group and their changing lifestyles and behaviour.

For example, a mayor commissioned by the city's tourism marketing department to develop a new tourism concept has already shown interest in the findings and content of the study, which once again highlights its practical relevance.

Luca Koroll's study also shows that social media data offers a new opportunity to gain in-depth insights into tourists that can be used for recommendation systems and personalized offers.

Since May 2023, the RWU graduate has been working as an IT consultant for sales and marketing processes at a consulting and IT company operating throughout Europe.

Other projects honored

In addition to Luca Koroll, more than 22 other students and pupils also received an award for their projects. A total of 18 were submitted, ten of which were awarded prize money of 15,000 euros. The "JUST! competition" takes place every two years. The Zeppelin Youth Foundation has been supporting innovative projects from Friedrichshafen schools, the Student Research Center and the surrounding universities since 1990.

The entire master's thesis can be found here to read.

Text: Lisann Gauß