Wikipedia edits have massive impact on tourism, say economists

Adding a few paragraphs and photos can boost revenue by 100,000 for small cities

Forget glossy travel brochures and whizzy online sites; one of the most cost-effective ways tourism chiefs can drive business to their towns or cities is by updating their Wikipedia page.

An experiment by economists at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, Italy, and ZEW in Mannheim, Germany, found that a few simple edits to a Wikipedia page could lead to an extra 100,000 a year in tourism revenue for a small city, underscoring the power of the free online encyclopaedia.