Hidden theorizing in big data analytics: With a reference to tourism design research

As demonstrated in Xiang and Fesenmaier’s (2017) collection of articles Tourism Design involves the application of Big Data Analytics. This raises the question whether the tourism researchers’ struggle for theory building may (have) come to an end since Big Data is doing it for them. Addressing several misunderstandings, the author discusses most recent studies, mainly from the field of Tourism Design, and identifies the masked elements of theory hidden in heavily data-driven big data analytical approaches.

Keywords: Tourism Design; Big Data Analytics; inductive reasoning; theory building.