dTS: Data-driven Tourism for Sustainability

Current developments, such as in the area of climate change, have shown how sensitive the tourism ecosystem is in responding to disruptive factors. Sustainable and scalable destination management concepts aimed at improving resilience while protecting vulnerable and marginalised groups are therefore essential. The dTS project therefore addresses the challenges of intelligent data use for the forward-looking development of tourist regions from the perspective of digital sustainability.

The aim is to contribute to resilient and sustainable regional tourism in Austria by combining AI, agent-based simulation and a federal data management platform via the management of visitor flows. This can help to change tourist behaviour on a sustainable basis and lead to a better balance of capacities in the long run. Two use cases were selected in the province of Salzburg in the aim of strengthening the entire region, exploiting mobility resources and working towards climate neutrality. The technical developments are accompanied by a sustainable perspective to ensure their effectiveness and optimal integration into the regional tourism ecosystem, following the principle of privacy by design at all times.

Smaller regions do not yet have the capacity, expertise or infrastructure to collect data on a continuous basis, in a targeted manner and with the appropriate quality. There are also legal obstacles in the area of personal data as well as licensing issues when using data from third-party service providers.

dTS proposes a scalable and portable model for resilient and sustainable tourism by analysing two use cases with differing degrees of technological maturity. The outcome should be a technical demonstration of a scalable data exchange and simulation platform that can also be used as a data space for visitor flows. The authentic movement and behavioural patterns of the target groups will be learned using artificial intelligence and agent-based simulations, making it possible to model "what-if" scenarios and thereby enable sustainable and smooth mobility concepts.

Consortium leader

• University for Continuing Education Krems

Additional consortium partners

• Fuscher FREGES GmbH
• DatenVorsprung GmbH
• nexyo GmbH
• TSG Tourismus Salzburg GmbH
• Vienna University of Technology
• Fachhochschule Salzburg GmbH