Turismo

SRM Consulting started initially oriented to the execution of cartographic production works, but it has evolved to become a company with an innovative and technological profile, creating its own software products for the analysis and management of geographic information.
solutions developed with artificial intelligence for applications and professional services in location intelligence, GIS, cartography and georeferenced videos.
In addition, SRM Consulting is an RPAS operating company registered with AESA.

Consultancy specialized in data visualization using different GIS technologies. Enhancing the visual part without forgetting the quality of the information.

GEOCyL is an independent consultancy firm based in Valladolid (Castilla y León), which contributes to the implementation of territorial and environmental sustainability values, supported by the use of new geographical information technologies.

GEOCyL develops environmental studies, cartography, natural risk analysis, GIS management and development, territorial planning, smart city and geomarketing projects. They solve the needs in these fields of administrations, private companies and the self-employed.

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.

Smartvel builds b2b content marketing solutions for airlines, hotel chains, travel agencies and tourism entities. They collect, monitor, classify, index, geolocate and translate segmented content from different sources. Then, they integrate this content, easily and quickly, into their client websites, driving user experience

In short, they provide a content solution that lets tourist know what to do in a specific place, mixing the destination's living agenda (events, culture, sports, etc.) with the points of interest (monuments, restaurants, etc.) and the own layers that their customers want to show.

On June 5th, the TourismKG 2018 will be held in Cáceres. It is the first international workshop that will address the application of knowledge graphs on the travel and tourism sector. This event is organized by Ontology Engineering Group, responsible for DBpedia of Spanish, the biggest semantic dataset in our language, together with TAIGER and ODI Madrid.

Knowledge graphs allow to link concepts through the integration of datasets. For this, it is necessary to represent knowledge using Semantic Web techniques, such as ontologies or vocabularies, to result in machine-readable data. Knowledge graphs are used by search engines such as Google or applications such as Siri, to improve the effectiveness of their response to users’ searches or questions.

While this technology has already been implemented in multiple domains, such as medical or e-commerce, its full potential has not yet been exploited in the field of tourism, a sector that represented 11.1% of the Spanish economy in 2016, according to OECD data.

To shed light on this topic, TourismKG 2018 will have researchers, experts and professionals who can share their knowledge. The idea is to have a debate on the challenges, opportunities and possible use cases of knowledge graphs in order to optimize this sector.

The agenda of the event has been developed in a collaborative manner, to create an inclusive event where attendees can express their concerns and solve their doubts. During the month of April, a “call for papers” was opened for all those who wished to share their work during the event. These papers should revolve around 4 possible topic of interest: "Open data, proprietary data, semantic web and tourism", "Ontologies and vocabularies for Travel and Tourism", " knowledge graphs generation and completion for Travel and Tourism", and "Techniques and applications of knowledge graphs for Travel and Torurism".

The TourismKG 2018 is a full-day workshop at the ICWE 2018 (18th International Conference on Web Engineering), that takes places at San Francisco complex in Cáceres. In its 18th edition, this event, focused on the field of design, creation, maintenance and usage of Web applications, will revolve around the theme "Enhancing the Web with Advanced Engineering".

As is well known, following the 1978 Constitution a decentralized model of territorial organization was established in Spain, characterized by the existence of at least three administrative levels: the state, the regional and the local, which in turn consists of several levels depending on the corresponding Autonomous Region (provincial, insular, county ...). As regards the scope of Public Administrations, in general this organizational model assumes that each body is assigned its own competencies, which it can exercise independently with respect to the others.

The competencies are divided among several public bodies in certain matters, which can be an added difficulty for infomediaries offering value-added services based on the reuse of information held by all of them. Indeed, it may be the case that some of the competent authorities have available a large catalog of information that complies with the standards of open data while the rest on the other hand either only offer electronic data in formats that are non-reusable by an automated system or else they are simply still immersed in a management environment based on paper. This diversity of issues can also lead to a special difficulty when all relevant and useful data related to a material area is to be integrated through a single application enabling its reuse.

The case of tourism in Spain

There is no better way to appreciate the scope of this problem than to project it on a concrete example. Take the case of tourism for its enormous importance in economic terms, since the weight of this sector in Spain exceeds 11% of GDP. At the state level competencies correspond to a particular department, the Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda, which performs its functions through a specific State Secretariat; while at the same time, other bodies have been created with their own legal personality, such as the autonomous body Turespaña, in charge of boosting Spain worldwide as a tourist destination, as well as the public entities Paradores and SEGITTUR, a state company that, in line with its institutional commitment to innovation, even has some open databases. On the other hand, many entities linked or belonging to the state public sector have functions assigned to them that are relevant for the tourism sector, such as air transport, railways or weather forecasting. Nor can we forget the state ownership of internationally recognized tourist areas of a cultural nature such as certain museums.

Administrative competences in tourism are not limited to the General State Administration. The Autonomous Regions have a very important role which is also reflected in the fact that they are opening their own specific information systems for tourism, with some very outstanding projects. However, as in the case of the State, in the autonomous regions there is also a multiplicity of competent entities and bodies, either specifically dedicated to the tourism sector, or with an indirect effect, such as nautical activities, the processing of administrative procedures related to the recognition of cultural heritage or, inter alia, the management of natural spaces or the management of transport and communications outside municipal areas. On the other hand, local authorities - especially municipalities - have important tourist information, regarding for example urban spaces, collective passenger transport, the management of cultural facilities, such as theaters and exhibition halls, leisure activities managed directly or promoted together with private entities ...

This jurisdictional fragmentation is an added hindrance for the development of applications based on the reuse of tourist information in the hands of the public sector, especially if what is intended is to offer a comprehensive service that should also incorporate data of interest held by private entities, such as certain types of properties (churches and other religious spaces) or leisure services (theaters, cinemas, amusement parks, sports events ...).

There are certain tools that facilitate access to information at the level of general standards to prevent disintegration as well as specific sections in public catalogs. There is a risk that the fragmentation of competencies characteristic of our model of administrative organization will also impact on the operation of technology and ultimately end up becoming an inhibitor of innovation and, therefore, of competitiveness. Promotion of technological innovation in the service of tourism means a decisive commitment to greater cooperation and coordination of openness of data on the part of the authorities concerned, thus ensuring not only technical, semantic and legal, but also organizational interoperability.

Tourism is a key sector for the Spanish economy and, for this reason, it is necessary to know the factors that affect this industry. Having access to the tourist information -preferences, destinations, spending per visitor... - help improve the business and public policies to make grow the profitability of the sector. For this reason, the openness and re-use of such data not only pave the way for Open Government and digitization of national tourism, but they would enhance new services, optimize tourism management, and increase economic activity and job creation.

Among the great opportunities presented by the use of this information is the development of smart tourist destinations; territories where the data of tourists are collected and whose storing, treatment, study and exploitation help the sector make more agile and effective decisions.

However, to make this feasible it is necessary that both public and private entities open and transform the information into open data. Thus, it is possible to design a more complete tourist offer whereas the resources that support tourism as urban transport, waste management or public safety, among others, are managed in a more efficiently and coordinated manner.

Nationally, the State Society for the Management of Innovation and Tourism Technologies (SEGITTUR), responsible for promoting innovation in the tourism sector in the country, has joined other government agencies to establish a strategic plan to promote and standardize the re-use of touristic open data through open data initiatives and open databases.

To this end, SEGITTUR has collaborated in the creation of the PNE 178301 Smart Cities Standard which states how to assess the publication of open data in an urban environment, with indicators that measure the degree of maturity of the openness of data in the field of Smart Cities. In parallel, the company has carried out an action plan, with different national tourist organizations, to open up databases in the industry, which have enabled the development of applications for the end user. It is precisely in this area where the re-use of touristic open data has achieved the greatest progress. In fact, the company has recently published, together with the Chamber of Commerce of Spain, a guide with  the 224 main applications of the Spanish tourism sector.

Also, nowadays, according to the Characterization Map of Open Data Initiatives in Spain, there are more than twenty open data portals that offer tourist information at local level. Despite the achievements to date, additional efforts are still needed to make the openness of public sector information a reality in any sphere, both public and private.

In this context, during the next Encuentro Aporta 2016, one of the sessions belonging to the first panel entitled "Coordination and harmonization as key success aspects for the data publication" will be dedicated to data and tourism. The director of i+D+I at SEGITTUR, Mr Carlos Romero, will be the guest speaker who will discuss the most interesting experiences in Spain around tourist open data and the opportunities for the whole society. In addition, the expert will also share with attendees two recent projects in the field: Intelligent Tourist Destinations and Tourism Intelligence Systems.

Would you like to attend and learn more about open data and national tourism? There's still time to register for the event through an online form and follow all news about Encuentro Aporta 2016 on its Twitter account.