Innovative Tools for Tourism and Cultural Tourism Impact Assessment

14 September 2020.  This article by IMPACTOUR colleagues has been published in the scientific journal, Sustainability 2020, 12 (18), 7470; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187470

It forms part of a Special Issue on: A European Perspective on Cultural Heritage as a Driver for Sustainable Development and Regional Resilience

The article draws on an original research study of 15 cultural tourism destinations in Europe, conducted in 2020 within the framework of the H2020 project, IMPACTOUR, co-funded by the European Union.  

Abstract

The importance of data and evidence has increased considerably in policy planning, implementation, and evaluation. There is unprecedented availability of open and big data, and there are rapid developments in intelligence gathering and the application of analytical tools. While cultural heritage holds many tangible and intangible values for local communities and society in general, there is a knowledge gap regarding suitable methods and data sources to measure the impacts and develop data-driven policies of cultural tourism. In the tourism sector, rapid developments are particularly taking place around novel uses of mobile positioning data, web scraping, and open application programming interface (API) data, data on sharing, and collaborative economy and passenger data.
Conceptual diagram for development of IMPACTOUR tool
Conceptual Diagram: IMPACTOUR tool
Based on feedback from 15 European cultural tourism regions, recommendations are developed regarding the use of innovative tools and data sources in tourism management. In terms of potential analytical depth, it is especially advisable to explore the use of mobile positioning data. Yet, there are considerable barriers, especially in terms of privacy protection and ethics, in using such data. User-generated big data from social media, web searches, and website visits constitute another promising data source as it is often publicly available in real time and has low usage barriers. Due to the emergence of new platform-based business models in the travel and tourism sector, special attention should be paid to improving access and usage of data on sharing and collaborative economy.
Keywords: cultural tourism; impact assessment; data analytics; mobile positioning data; social media data; web traffic data; online travel reviews; sharing economy; passenger data; innovation barriers
 
Authors:  Tarmo Kalvet 1,2,*, Maarja Olesk 1, Marek Tiits 1,2 and Janika Raun 3
 
1 Institute of Baltic Studies, Lai 30, 51005 Tartu, Estonia
2 Department of Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology 5, 19086 Tallinn, Estonia
3 Department of Geography, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Tartu, 51005 Tartu, Estonia
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

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