Destinations Struggle to Use Data to Manage Tourism Growth

Many destinations want to keep up with their competitors and promote their respective plans to grow and better manage tourism as some cities' tourist infrastructure can't keep up with demand. Using data is key to putting those plans in motion but too often that data – even when available – doesn't trickle down to local city and neighborhood decision makers. That's the view of some tourism boards and researchers who spoke at the United Nations World Tourism Organization's (UNWTO) International Conference on Tourism Statistics last month in Manilla, the Philippines. Some of the discussions centered around creating a global framework for measuring tourism and how to use data to create sustainable growth plans. The conference included delegates from 88 countries and was part of the United Nation's 2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism For Development. Many attendees were optimistic about Big Data's potential for managing tourism growth but were also concerned that destinations aren't making their plans simple enough for residents to understand while making them too broad for local neighborhoods to find them useful. "Tourism happens at the community level and it's at that level that we'll need to translate this kind of evolving thinking into first off, language that ordinary mortals understand," said Geoffrey Lipman, a professor of sustainable tourism growth at Hasselt University in Limburg, Belgium andand co-founder of SUNx, a non-profit organization that helps destinations combat climate change, speaking during the conference. Portugal, for example, has seen an influx of tourists in recent years and its government recently announced a set of goals aimed at the economic