The use of open data in the tourism sector

When planning our vacations, we all look for the perfect destination that meets our expectations: beach, mountain, city... But once we have decided where to go, we still have to make many decisions: how am I going to organize my trip so that everything goes perfect? Luckily, we have hundreds of applications that make our lives much easier.

Nowadays you can use some apps to calculate the most suitable route to reach your destination or to decide where to fill up the car during the journey without damaging your pocket. You can also look for accommodation or restaurants with a good value for money, using your mobile. Or consult the cultural activities of the area, looking for activities aimed at the youngest members of the family. And, if you want to go to the beach, you can easily check the state of the sea, the wind or the temperature of the water without leaving the hotel.

All these applications, in addition to helping us organize our vacations in a simple way, have something in common: their functioning is based on open data from public administrations.

The fact that an increasing number of local administrations are opening their tourism data allows us to generate services that help to manage our trips in a more efficient way, integrating information that is sometimes difficult to find. As an example, Asturias or Aragón are promoting catalogues of specific datasets focused on this area.

Many of these applications have been designed by individuals and companies, reusing available open data, but others have been promoted by the public administrations. This is because tourism open data not only help visitors, but also have great advantages for municipalities.

Tourism is a fundamental economic activity for our country. During the first 5 months of 2018, Spain exceeded 28.6 million international tourists, representing an increase of 2% over the same period of the previous year. These tourists are a great source of economic income: just in May, the average expenditure per tourist was 1,009 euros, 1.8% more than in 2017. It is not surprising, therefore, that all city councils wants to promote their services and attract visitors.

Tourism applications based on open data can favor interaction between visitors and the local community, promoting local services and fostering economic growth. In addition, some applications even allow to collect information from users under their consent. The analysis of this anonymized information, combined with other data sets such as the total expenditure on trips of international tourists who participate in cultural activities or tourists housed by municipalities, allows knowing tourists behavior patterns and designing specific policies with the focus on innovation and intelligent management of tourist destinations.

Traditionally, the tourism sector has a great weight in Spain, but like all sectors, it has to keep renewing itself so as not to be left behind, integrating new elements that help improve the visitor's experience. Open data linked to the use of new technologies such as Big Data analysis and artificial intelligence are a good option - for example to make recommendations and customizations based on user behavior-. The ultimate goal is to provide a high quality global service that allows us to continue being leaders and receiving millions of visitors year after year.