Vısıtıng lecturer
Universidad de leon
SOFÍA BLANCO-MORENO
Sofía Blanco-Moreno is a Marketing and Tourism expert with a specialization in Digital Marketing and technologies such as Web Scraping and Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning and Deep Learning) applied in Tourism and Hospitality. She is also a PhD student and an assistant professor at the University of León (Spain), and she has worked as a Digital Marketing expert on international companies such as Meliá Hotels. She has received several research awards, such as the best communication at the AIRSI and AIM 2023 conferences, I UAM-ASSECO Business Case Award 2022 and “Proof of concept” within the University-Business Knowledge Transfer Plan for the platform Photo Data Tour Analytics. Regarding her professional training, she has taught web scraping and artificial intelligence analysis courses at different universities such as Lleida, Zaragoza, Valencia and Valladolid, as well as in the REDINTUR network and the European university EURECA.
The topic of the visiting lecture was “Al Powered Insights: Analyzing Visual and Textual Content on Social Media for Destination Marketing Management” on March 19th, 2025. In this workshop, participants will learn how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning techniques can be used to analyze user-generated content from social media platforms. The workshop will cover how text, images, and metadata are processed to extract insights about tourist behavior, engagement patterns, and destination attractiveness. Participants will gain an understanding of how Al-powered methodologies can improve destination marketing strategies by leveraging social media data.
WORKSHOP LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Understand the role of Al in analyzing social media content for tourism research.
• Identify key data sources and extraction techniques, including web scraping.
• Explain how text analysis, image recognition, and metadata analysis contribute to destination marketing strategies.
• Recognize ethical considerations and best practices in handling social media data.
