Tourism is one of the largest industries worldwide, accounting for a substantial percentage of the world GDP. For many countries, especially some island economies such as the Bahamas, it is the main source of income and employment. Tourism is also an important source of income for poor countries.
Tourism involves flows of goods, services, and people on a global scale. Therefore we could say that it is a visible expression of globalization itself. Globalization has opened new opportunities for tourism development. First of all, it brought more suppliers and customers in, which also means more competition. With the fast growth of information technology and its application in tourism industry, the efficiency and service quality have been greatly increased. New information technology like big data has provided more possibilities for each player in the industry, which could be challenges as well.
The role of country tourism board
Each country has a tourism board, or call it a tourism commission, administration, whatever. If you go to their websites, you could find introduction of the country’s culture, most famous scenes, transportation and accommodation details, even advertisements on some exhibition or promotion for certain activities. It almost looks like a travel agency’s website. However, in fact, a tourism board’s function is much broader than this.
So what does a tourism board do? Their main purpose of course is to maintain the sustainable and healthy growth of the country’s tourism industry. In the context of globalization, it also has the responsibility to promote the country’s culture and tourism services in the world market, as well as protect local culture and ecological environment. To be more specific, its main function includes:
1. Plan and coordinate the development of the tourism industry, setting up development policies and strategies. Of course after setting up the policies and regulations, it also need to supervise the implementation of those policies.
2. Communication and exchange in the global market, including organizing external publicity and significant promotional activities to promote and improve the country’s image.
3. Coordinating the development and protection of tourism resources on a country level. This includes instructing the layout and development of key tourism regions, destinations and routes.
4. Protecting interests of tourists and improving service quality of the industry. This includes setting up standards on tourism services and products.
5. Providing education and training services, collecting industrial data.
How big data could help country tourism boards to reach their goals
As we mentioned earlier, big data has provided new ways as well as challenges for each player in the industry, including the tourism boards. Let’s now examine how big data could help country tourism boards reach their goals.
First of all, although I put collecting industrial data in the last function of country tourism boards, it does not mean it is the least important one. In fact, it is the foundation of the implementation of all other functions of the country tourism boards. And this does not just start when big data emerges. Collecting and maintaining industrial data could said to be a traditional responsibility of country tourism boards. So you could almost imagine how much data they have accumulated through all these years. And how to make good use of these data becomes the natural question and even a great challenge for the tourism boards. Big data technology could address this problem perfectly.
Big data can help tourism boards understand tourists’ behavior and consumption habits in a much more organized way. For example, they could find out from the historical data the density of each tourism region and amount of consumption over years, including the changes and trends on different consumption categories. With these analysis, the tourism boards could make judgment on whether the development of each region is balanced enough. What’s more, with the knowledge of consumption habits and trends, tourism boards could make more scientific policies to lead more consumption in less developed regions.
In the global tourism market, big data could also play an important role on improving tourism boards’ effectiveness. For inbound tourism, which means the market where foreign tourists visiting the host countries, it is a bit similar with domestic market. Big data technology could help analyze the behavior and consumption habits of tourists from different countries. This lays the foundation for the tourism boards to formulate different policies for different countries. For example, from the historical data on visitors’ countries of origin and their tourism destinations, tourism boards could find out what kind of tourism destinations is more attractive to certain countries’ tourists. And they could make targeting marketing strategies or promotion in those countries. Another example could be the length of stay of different countries’ tourists in different tourism destinations. The analysis of these data could help the tourism boards better plan and organize tourism resources such as accommodation in different regions.
For outbound tourism, which means the market where host countries’ tourists visiting other foreign countries, big data could help to analyze host countries’ tourists behavior and consumption habits as well. For example, there are lots of reports recently on Chinese tourists’ inappropriate behaviors in foreign countries which raised international attention. Big data could provide more detailed analysis such as whether certain behavior is due to misunderstanding of the local culture or misleading of the travel agencies. Such analysis could help the tourism board to design focused education programs for the people or training programs of the tourism agents. With the developing of the economy, Chinese people’s purchasing power also increased. Chinese tourists spend substantial amount of money on purchasing all kinds of products in foreign countries. By using big data technology, the Chinese National Tourism Administration can find out where did Chinese tourists spend their money on mostly and even predict their consumption trends. The analysis could then provide guidance for domestic Chinese providers for the way of improvement in order to attract more oversea consumption back to the domestic market. This is another good example of the application of big data for country tourism boards.
Big data also helps on tourists interest protection. For example, it can help to analyze the violation models of different tourism service providers. Tourism boards could then use these analysis to formulate relevant regulations to better protect tourists’ interests.
Conclusion
Country tourism boards as government agencies, are entities traditionally function with rich data. Big data provides an innovative way to manage and make use of the rich data in a global context. However, whether they can successfully implement big data technology depends on a lot of conditions such as willingness, financial support, skilled personnel, etc.
References:
http://www.cnta.gov.cn/
http://www.discoverhongkong.com/tc/index.jsp
http://www.yoursingapore.com/content/traveller/zh/experience.html
http://eng.taiwan.net.tw/
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