Can digital trace data say something about where tourists actually are? In a paper presented at AIM 2026 in Neuchâtel, Lucas Eustache and Paul Favier (Université Paris-Dauphine) examine whether the device composition of Wikipedia attention carries behavioral information: mobile pageviews are more likely to reflect situated, on-site information needs than desktop views.
Linking daily Accor hotel room-nights to Wikipedia traffic for 704 French cities (2018 to 2025, 1.6 million city-day observations), the authors find that mobile pageviews are positively associated with same-day hotel demand and dominate desktop traffic when both enter jointly. A micro-validation on six cultural attractions in Orléans shows the same pattern.
The results suggest that the composition of online attention, not just its volume, contains interpretable signal about contemporaneous tourism activity, from a data source that is open and replicable.