All over the world tourism destinations are continuously investing and developing new strategies to increase their appeal towards prospect visitors and better manage tourism flows. To this end, many destination management organisations (DMOs) decided to pursue the status of smart destination, by fostering innovation and the uptake of data-driven solutions to enhance their own and local stakeholders offer and business structure, developing new and more sustainable forms of tourism, while broadening their approach to ‘destination management’. The latter has been often done by creating synergies with wider ‘smart city’ programmes – e.g., by sharing technologies initially used for mobility purposes only, adapting them also to tourism-specific purposes and generating economies of scale – or by establishing long-term partnerships with the private sector.
In this sense, the 2020 pandemic outbreak marked an acceleration in the process of digitalisation and in the generation of new ideas and initiatives, often based on smart data management. The necessity to support businesses and ensure administrative and operative continuity by swiftly adopting digital solutions and datadriven approaches emerged in nearly any sector and industry, and the tourism one was no exception. Consequently, an ever-growing number of destinations virtuously starting their journey towards smart tourism can be observed today, both in Europe and abroad.
The following pages contain key information on the main aspects related to the implementation of smart tourism solutions based on enhanced data mastering. The purpose is to share crucial knowledge and understanding from current tourism mega-trends observed worldwide and types of data produced in the tourism ecosystem, to challenges in the implementation of data-driven approaches for tourism management. The document also includes a number of practical and actionable suggestions, based on smart tourism best practices, taking into consideration also the developments and challenges generated by the 2020 pandemic.
This guide on data for tourism destinations might therefore result useful for any type of destination willing to improve the way they collect and use data for tourism purposes and hopefully become inspirational for those cities, regions, or countries, eager to start their journey towards becoming smart tourism destinations.
All over the world tourism destinations are continuously investing and developing new strategies to increase their appeal towards prospect visitors and better manage tourism flows. To this end, many destination management organisations (DMOs) decided to pursue the status of smart destination, by fostering innovation and the uptake of data-driven solutions to enhance their own and local stakeholders offer and business structure, developing new and more sustainable forms of tourism, while broadening their approach to ‘destination management’. The latter has been often done by creating synergies with wider ‘smart city’ programmes – e.g., by sharing technologies initially used for mobility purposes only, adapting them also to tourism-specific purposes and generating economies of scale – or by establishing long-term partnerships with the private sector.
In this sense, the 2020 pandemic outbreak marked an acceleration in the process of digitalisation and in the generation of new ideas and initiatives, often based on smart data management. The necessity to support businesses and ensure administrative and operative continuity by swiftly adopting digital solutions and datadriven approaches emerged in nearly any sector and industry, and the tourism one was no exception. Consequently, an ever-growing number of destinations virtuously starting their journey towards smart tourism can be observed today, both in Europe and abroad.
The following pages contain key information on the main aspects related to the implementation of smart tourism solutions based on enhanced data mastering. The purpose is to share crucial knowledge and understanding from current tourism mega-trends observed worldwide and types of data produced in the tourism ecosystem, to challenges in the implementation of data-driven approaches for tourism management. The document also includes a number of practical and actionable suggestions, based on smart tourism best practices, taking into consideration also the developments and challenges generated by the 2020 pandemic.
This guide on data for tourism destinations might therefore result useful for any type of destination willing to improve the way they collect and use data for tourism purposes and hopefully become inspirational for those cities, regions, or countries, eager to start their journey towards becoming smart tourism destinations.
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