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Tourism Data sharing, Governance and Integration

27–28 September 2023 - Workshop Venue: NH Brussels EU Berlaymont / hybrid

The Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) organised a workshop on “Data Sharing, Governance and Integration” through the TAIEX instrument*, with the OECD as implementing partner of the Technical Support Instrument projects for the 2022 Flagship “Support to the tourism ecosystem: towards a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism, together with Croatia, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.

Tourism is a complex, service-based sector built on the movement of people. The rapid succession of crises in recent years has highlighted the importance of having timely, granular and comparable tourism data available to inform policy and business decisions, and support the shift to a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism. However, while significant advances have been made to improve tourism data, the timeliness of, and ability to share, available data to meet the needs of decision makers remains a challenge.

This workshop supported the exchange of knowledge and good practices on data sharing and integration to enhance evidence-based decision making for policy and businesses. It considered opportunities to measure tourism with new data sources, integrate tourism data sets to strengthen understanding of the sector, and key data sharing issues including data governance, digital infrastructure and meeting the needs of the end user.

 

You may find below the AGENDA of the Workshop:
 

Day 1

Workshop Moderator

Ms. Apolonija Oblak Flander, Head of Division - Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia 

08:30 – 09:00

Registration

09:00 – 09:05

Workshop opening

Ms. Apolonija Oblak Flander, Head of Division - Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia 

09:05 – 09:10

Opening Remarks

09:10 –09:40

Introduction and welcome

Moderator: Mr. Kaspar Richter, Head of Unit Sustainable Growth and Business Environment, DG REFORM

  • Mr. Mario Nava, Director-General - DG REFORM
  • Ms. Valentina Superti, Director Ecosystems II: Tourism & proximity - DG GROW
  • Mr. Nadim Ahmad, Deputy Director Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities - OECD
09:40 - 10:00

Networking Coffee

10:00 – 12:00

Session 1: What’s the story – sharing data to improve tourism decision making

The demand for tourism data is at an all-time high. Providing access to tourism data has become a key priority for many countries and the sector to enable better decision making for government, business and the local community. As resource and capacity constraints continue to play a role, there is a need to consider what data is meaningful to portray the tourism context and enable decision making.

Moderator: Ms. Jane Stacey, Head of Tourism - OECD

Lead interventions:

Participants will be invited to discuss and share experiences.

Topics for discussion:

  • What is driving the need to share data, and what are the different needs of different decisions makers (government, businesses, community)?
  • What data does the end user need, and how should it be displayed to tell the story for decision making?
  • What is the priority data to share given resource and capacity constraints – should we share all data, or just some data?
12:00 – 13:00

Group photo at the hotel lobby & Networking Lunch

13:00 – 14:45

Session 2: Ensuring good data governance with increased timeliness and granularity

Evidence-based decision making relies on the availability of timely and granular data. To fill existing gaps, new data sources and methodologies are being explored to complement traditional methods, but this comes with new complexities. Ensuring good data governance is essential to the integration of the new data sources for tourism measurement.

Moderator: Ms. Eleonora Lorenzini, Politecnico di Milano, Director of the Travel Innovation and the Digital Innovation in Heritage & Culture Observatories

Lead interventions:

Participants will be invited to discuss and share experiences.

Topics for discussion:

  • How to meet the demand for sharing of granular data in a timely way while addressing the issues this raises issues for data governance and privacy, particularly related to:
    • aggregated personal data in real time
    • government data
    • linking new data approaches with existing tourism data
  • What are the most promising data sources that can be used to provide more timely and granular data, but in a secure and robust way?
14:45 – 15:15

Networking Coffee

15:15 – 16:45

Session 3: Navigating the complexities of integrating diverse tourism data sets

Tourism is a complex sector, where data is often fragmented or time lagged. How can different tourism data sources be integrated or combined to provide an overview of the tourism and policy environment.

Moderator: Mr Simon Bley, Statistical officer – Eurostat

Lead interventions:

Participants will be invited to discuss and share experiences.

Topics for discussion:

  • How to identify and combine the appropriate data sets, considering the complexities of tourism data?
  • How to keep tourism data up to date and deliver a consistent story, when faced with delayed and data covering different time periods?
  • How to integrate private data with official sources for more predictive decision making?
16:45 – 17:00

Day 1 Closing remarks

Ms. Apolonija Oblak Flander, Head of Division - Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia

19.30

Networking Dinner NH Brussels Berlaymont

Day 2

9:00 – 9:10

Welcome

9:10 – 10:30

Session 4: Using data hubs and spaces to fill the gaps in tourism data

The tourism sector is composed of many different branches and dominated by SMEs which co-exist with a few large global players. Existing tourism and administrative data can make it difficult to identify tourism businesses and design targeted support. There is a role that data hubs and data spaces can play to help fill this information gap.

Moderator: Dolores Ordonez, Director - AnySolution

Lead interventions

Participants will be invited to discuss and share experiences.

Topics for discussion:

  • How can information in data spaces and data hubs can help fill the gaps in tourism information?
  • What should be captured in these data spaces, and how can it be used for decision making?
  • How to link data hubs and data spaces to create a complete understanding of the tourism system?
10:30 - 11:00

Networking Coffee

11:00 – 12:30

Session 5: ‘Digital infrastructure’ – building data sharing platforms from the foundation

Sharing tourism data is essential to enable better decision making. With complex data systems and multiple time series, it can be difficult to understand how to best organise the data the digital infrastructure required and how to make best us of the resources that are available.  

Moderator: Ms. Apolonija Oblak Flander, Head of Division - Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia

Lead interventions:

Participants will be invited to discuss and share experiences.

Topics for discussion:

  • What is the required digital infrastructure to combine data sources and share data?
  • How do you organise data to share it in an effective and efficient way?
  • What suitable platforms for data sharing considering the constraints of tourism data?
12:30 – 12:45

Closing remarks and next steps

Moderator: Ms. Apolonija Oblak Flander, Head of Division - Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia

  • Ms. Jane Stacey, Head of Tourism - OECD (online)
  • Ms. Nathalie Berger, Director for Support to Member States’ Reforms - DG REFORM
12:45 – 13.45

Light lunch

Language

The workshop was held in English.

If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at REFORM-B3atec [dot] europa [dot] eu (REFORM-B3[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).

* TAIEX (Technical Assistance and Information Exchange), the instrument of the European Commission that supports public administrations facilitating the sharing of EU best practices.

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Support to the tourism ecosystem: towards a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism

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