Data needs and gaps in Smart Tourism Destinations – empirical results

This study examines the state of data literacy among European DMOs in 2024, as well as their data and information needs. DMOs play a key role in tourism by acting as intermediaries between different stakeholders, therefore it is important to gain insights on their data needs and data literacy. The focus is on data-driven destination management as an advancement of the smart destination concept. The study is based on a standardised survey (April–June 2024) with 226 analysed responses (127 from DMOs). The sample is not representative but covers 26 EU countries and different DMO levels. The majority of respondents consider themselves more advanced in data competence than comparable organisations. In addition, results from two workshops and a number of qualitative interviews provided additional insights into existing gaps in data usage. Most DMOs have easy access to only two of the eight surveyed data sources: Monthly overnight stays (60%) and accommodation establishment registry (56%). Other relevant data, such as tourism’s economic or environmental impact, are more difficult to access. Only 9% of surveyed DMOs report to have a specific smart destination strategy and less than 30% use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), mainly overnight stays and tourism expenditures. Sustainability indicators play a minor role. Regional and local data are used more frequently than national or global data. Real-time data access is very limited (e.g., only 4% for national data). Accommodation statistics, online marketing data, and booking data are considered useful and frequently used. Data on tourism’s environmental impact are perceived as not helpful and are rarely used. Asked, which type of support DMOs prefer, most seek best practice examples, transparency on available data and tools, and sustainability indicators. Despite the theoretical importance of DMOs in smart tourism, the reality reveals significant deficits: - 70% of DMOs have no KPIs, and almost half require support in all stages of data processing. - The primary source of information remains accommodation statistics. - Real-time data access and data-driven decision-making are barely established. We assume that our sample is biased towards those DMO representatives having an interest in the topic. We conclude that the average DMO in Europe is even less advanced than our sample. Workshops and 1:1 interviews revealed that many DMOs identify a huge gap between data and action, which reflects an uncertainty on how to transform data-based insights into interventions. This is a long known fact and DMOs are mostly aware of this. At the same time and besides this “known unknown”, DMOs are mostly unaware of a second important data gap which occurs in evaluating their interventions and goes beyond monitoring. The call to action for DMOs from this research is to re-evaluate their data strategies and consider the previously “unknown unknown” data gap.