Open Data in tourism
Publication Date/Time
2018-10-24T09:00:00+00:00
Country
Europe
How Open Data can sustainably improve the cooperation in tourism
sector
RISING DEMAND FOR NEW SERVICES 

Every year millions of people flock to holiday areas to relax at the
beach, explore nature or go sightseeing. The tourism industry has been
experiencing a sustained boom
[https://www.itb-berlin.de/de/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/News_52689.html]
for years and is continuously generating increased revenues in the
holiday regions. Since digitisation does not stop at tourism,
innovative solutions come into focus here as well. Data-driven
services like apps and online communities are increasingly in demand
and are frequently used for travel planning. However, a prerequisite
for these services is the availability of data.

BENEFITS OF OPEN DATA

Published in June 2018 on the European Data Portal
[/en/news/open-data-tourism], the article _The benefits of Open Data
re-use are gaining awareness in tourism sector_
[/en/news/open-data-tourism] elaborates that the use of Open Data in
tourism is predicted to have great potential. The availability of data
and the openness of platforms in tourism were also discussed during
the 11th Tourism Camp
[https://corporate.outdooractive.com/oa-blog-en/complete-success-outdooractive-roundtable-open-data-tourism-tourism-camp-2018/?noredirect=en_US]
in cooperation with the network Tourismuszukunft
[https://www.tourismuszukunft.de/2018/06/open-data-dmo-tourismus/] and
outdooractive [https://www.outdooractive.com/en/guide/], with a
particular focus on active cooperation. The aim was to create more
transparency about existing industry projects. A panel of experts
discussed how an Open Data infrastructure in tourism, based on a
Linked Open Data (LOD) approach
[https://eprints.weblyzard.com/54/1/submission6_CR.pdf], can be
implemented in the future to achieve sustainable digital
transformation in tourism. Initiatives and approaches to standardise
real-time data flow in tourism already exist at the European level. A
project of the Salzburger Land Tourism Association
[https://blog.insideout.io/en/wl_entity_type/organization/] already
provides tourist information as Linked Open Data and stringently
pursues the goal of building up knowledge graphs
[http://www.eutravelproject.eu/uploadfiles/DBKBDA_2017.pdf] for
tourism in other regions as well. These enable interoperability
between the technical systems as well as hierarchy levels and thus
enables the compatibility of different systems and collaboration of
different actors in the tourism sector.

THE TIME IS RIPE

The dissemination of standardised data will become even more important
in the future and the tourism sector can benefit from it. The
accessibility of data related to tourism offers the provision of
information regarding region and location descriptions, tours or
sights that can be read and processed by interfaces, databases and
machines. The large IT companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and
Apple, who have an extensive understanding of data, already offer
communication solutions in almost all areas - including tourism.
Google, for example, provides the app Google trips
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2016/09/21/google-trips-review/#711090af2753]
where the user benefits from the extensive database of the search
engine giant. With the user's consent to access his or her personal
data in combination with existing data obtained by Google, the app
analyses the mail traffic and the Google calendar so that flight data
and destinations are available and additional journeys and offers can
be suggested. In order to stay competitive smaller actors in the
tourism sector are now realising that they have to share their data to
offer tourists seamless and value-added services.

FIRST STEPS INTO THE FUTURE OF OPEN DATA IN TOURISM

Open Data plays a key part in promoting the tourism sector. The
company outdooractive manages many tourist data with the open central
database solution
[https://corporate.outdooractive.com/oa-blog/open-data-im-tourismus/].
These include events, current news, region and place descriptions,
tours and activity trail networks, accommodation reviews, excursion
destinations and sights, and stories, pictures or videos.

With its app [https://www.outdooractive.com/en/mobile.html],
outdooractive offers the user the possibility to plan a complete tour
from start to end. Users of the app can become part of the community
by publishing their own planned and recorded tours on the app's
platform. This is only possible because of the complete
synchronisation between the website and application.

This example illustrates initiated plans for the use of Open Data in
tourism. If the tourism industry succeeds in organising itself jointly
and building a comprehensive, open and interoperable data
infrastructure, this could promote competition and innovation, enable
new business models and reduce dependencies. More and more people are
able to travel and are interested in such services, which is why
innovative ideas within the tourism industry are far from being
exhausted. For this reason, the industry should now start to move
closer together and make use of synergy effects.

Let the journey begin!
