  Tourism favors more economic activities, employment, revenues and plays a
significant role in development; thus, the improvement of this activity is a
strategic task. In this work, we show how social sensing can be used to
understand the key characteristics of the behavior of tourists and residents.
We observe distinct behavioral patterns in those classes, considering the
spatial and temporal dimensions, where cultural and regional aspects might play
an important role. Besides, we investigate how tourists move and the factors
that influence their movements in London, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
In addition, we propose a new approach based on a topic model that enables the
automatic identification of mobility pattern themes, ultimately leading to a
better understanding of users' profiles. The applicability of our results is
broad, helping to provide better applications and services in the tourism
segment.
