Open Call: EU Competence Centre to Support Data Management in Tourism Destinations

Deadline: 26-Apr-23

The European Commission (EC) is calling for proposals for EU Competence Centre to Support Data Management in Tourism Destinations.

Scope

• The objective of the grant will be to contribute to setting up and operation of a knowledge hub that can provide destinations with guidance and information related to data management, as well as business intelligence on how to source and use data and apply data-intensive information to address policy actions and strategies.
• European business intelligence Hub for Tourism will be tasked with offering business and intelligence support to destination management organisations (DMOs) across the EU, and optionally tourism SMEs, through a number of actions related to data analytics and management and developing digital access to European offer in tourism. The list of tasks may include:
  • Overviewing the main data needs and uses by destinations, and the key players in the single market, thereby centralising knowledge and access to big and traditional data for the use of DMOs;
  • Maintaining the above mentioned overview updated and easy to consult for DMOs;
  • Reviewing existing ontologies and developing a European approach for describing tourism offer with a shared vocabulary that can be used for marketing and searching tourism offer online;
  • Developing an open standards based platform where DMOs and EU tourism companies can make available and findable their tourism offers on European level following “once only” principle from the perspective of the tourism service provider;
  • Identifying key data for destination and tourism businesses’ management, with particular attention to competitiveness and sustainability goals, and enhance it so as to provide DMOs (and EU tourism industry) with easy-to-use tools for strategic decisions and for monitoring improvements in sustainability and resilience of destinations. This action would be carried out with a view to establish good practices and procedures related to data collection and big data acquisition, use and re-use that will be useful to make a future EU data space for tourism operational and of immediate use to the stakeholders in the tourism sector. This action may be carried out in cooperation with the Support Centre for Data Sharing established by the European Commission. Once the EU data space for tourism is in place, this action may be interlinked or integrated into it;
  • Supporting DMOs, and optionally EU tourism businesses, in capacity development as regards data analytics and business intelligence. This action may include the dissemination of the principles laid out in the Code of Conduct for data sharing in tourism, currently in preparation by stakeholders and expected by summer 2022.

Funding Information

The available call budget is EUR 3 000 000.

Expected Outcomes

Contribute to the upskilling of DMOs in data acquisition, use, management, and in business strategies based on data, through use and re-use of available data (incl. big data), information and indicators and in view of the possibility to co-operate with a future European data space for tourism. Populating the future European tourism data space with digital information of tourism offers across several Member states, based on open definitions. Publicise concrete examples of well-functioning public-private data sharing and open data set creations between stakeholders in destinations.

Eligibility Criteria

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:

• be legal entities (public or private bodies)
• be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.
  • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))

For more information, visit European Commission.