Updating Wikipedia pages of cities could boost tourism, a study finds

It was conducted by the economists at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, Italy. They randomly selected some cities across Spain for altering their Wikipedia pages. It consisted of adding a few paragraphs about the local attractions and the cities’ history, and a few high-quality pictures of the place. The outlet mentions that in most cases, the researchers simply translated the Spanish version of the page to French, German, Italian or Dutch.

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As a result, they noticed a surge in interest from tourists. An extra paragraph or two, along with the addition of one photo to a city’s entry, elevated the number of nights spent there by nine per cent on average during peak season, the outlet reports.

This exercise worked well even for cities which had little original information on its Wikipedia pages. Some minor additions had a profound impact, resulting in more visits to the place.

“If we extend this to the entire tourism industry, the impact is large. Its impact could be in billions of euros,” the study’s authors, Marit Hinnosaar, Toomas Hinnosaar and Michael Kumme, were quoted as saying.

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