NEWS

A research project led by Professor Feiyu Hu of the College of Sustainability and Tourism (ST) has been selected for MEXT’s AI for Science program, Supporting Pioneering Research through AI for 1,000 Discovery challenges (SPReAD).

SPReAD is a nationwide competitive program that supports ambitious research projects aimed at advancing and accelerating scientific research through the use of AI. The program targets a wide range of research areas from humanities and social sciences to natural sciences. The selection process is highly competitive, with acceptance rates of just 2.9% in the first call and 3.7% in the second.

Hu’s project, titled “Understanding Changes in Accommodation Experiences in Major Japanese Tourism Cities through Large-Scale Multilingual Review Analysis: Shifting Expectation Baselines and Gaps in DX Acceptance,” analyze around 1 million reviews of accommodation facilities across 73 cities in Japan. The project aims to identify how travelers’ expectations and satisfaction levels have changed over time.

Using AI to analyze multilingual data, the research aims to identify regional differences in perceptions of tourism services and digital transformation (DX), and generate insights that can contribute to tourism policy and regional development.

As a pioneering initiative that applies AI to social sciences research, this project is expected to contribute to the development of data-driven research in the field of tourism.