Digital challenges in tourism

Digitalization is making travel planning more individual and authentic. Visitors are using digital channels and information sources more and more when planning their trip, but above all on site. And this is completely independent of their destination. The decision for or against a vacation destination is made quickly, usually with a click or a tap of the finger. In order to master these digital challenges in tourism in the coming years, the strength of a networked and united industry is urgently needed. Above all, the (open) data from tourism associations and companies will flow into new services and solutions. And thus make tourism future-proof. New products, services and applications are created with networked, high-quality data. We are not yet aware of many of them or are unable to assess their significance. The German National Tourist Board’s Open Data Project, in which data is structured and published with the help of a knowledge graph, enables digital technologies to be used in tourism marketing. At national level and in the federal states, the topics of open data and the digital provision of offers, online bookability and the semantic web have already arrived in the tourism industry. Now other very important players need to be given more attention. The film therefore addresses precisely this important target group: the operational level in tourism – locally and regionally. In addition to employees in tourist information offices, this also includes managers of medium-sized and small tourism associations. But other tourism service providers and political players also play an important role. They are directly responsible for making local tourism data available. Their participation in the measures and initiatives of the German National Tourist Board for more digitalization is crucial to the success of the project. In order to be able to contribute significantly to data quality in the Open Data project, various points are important for employees in tourism: on the one hand, the establishment and development of the necessary technical know-how and an awareness of the need for new, digital workflows. On the other hand, they also need to be aware of and convinced of essential processes and products in digitalized tourism. With this knowledge and awareness, they will be able to make a significant contribution to data quality in the open data project. It is a joint effort that an industry as well-connected as tourism can achieve.