In our NADIT project, we are primarily concerned with data and digitalisation in tourism. Having succeeded in identifying and providing the most important data sources for tourism, we started to reflect on the data infrastructure and aimed to find out what systems are used in tourism. The result of this work is the tourism IT systems and providers landscape.
IT System Providers in Tourism
In the dynamic tourism industry, data and the omnipresence of the Internet have revolutionized the way travel experiences are crafted and delivered. Tourism organisations need to adapt their strategies and invest in digital solutions to be able to showcast their destinations, enable customers to book tickets seamlessly and plan their trip and stay. At the heart of this change lie IT systems and providers, acting as the architects of seamless and efficient operations. These providers play a big role in orchestrating the flow of information, connectivity, and user experience.
In the picture below we present the overview of IT systems and providers used by regional tourism organizations in Switzerland. Systems and providers are divided into 10 categories, depending on their field of application.
Remark: The landscape above is the result of the conducted interviews. It is not a complete picture, but contains selected information on systems and providers. The graphic should not be interpreted as an overview of the entire market for available services and solutions.
Interestingly, the landscape is very heterogenous, and shows how many various systems and providers are used in the tourism industry in Switzerland. These systems and providers contribute to the tourism data infrastructure through an array of offerings, ranging from reservation systems, itinerary planners to sophisticated analytics platforms. The art is putting them together in use.
From the interviews with the DMO’s we evaluated that the system landscape of the DMO’s are significantly different and almost not interconnected. Local and regional tourism organisations have various approaches toward data infrastructur and system integration. It was also recognised that there is also a divide in the system landscape and that DMOs in French-speaking Switzerland use different systems to DMOs in German-speaking Switzerland.
Another finding is that human and financial resources for digitalisation and data infrastructure are (very) limited and many projects are supported by NRP, Innotour or other governmental support funds. Finally, it was also found that the level of maturity varies greatly between the destinations.
As can be seen in the image above, the variety of systems is huge. However, there are some systems/providers that are used by a large number of DMOs. These include TOMAS, Guidle, discover.swiss, Outdooractive, OpenBooking and Alturos. The following providers were also mentioned several times during the interviews: TSO, Neusta, Sanity, Braze and Tableau.
Finally, we see that attempts are being made within DMOs to integrate systems and create a content hub. There are 4 DMOs that already use an open data API and 5 of the DMOs interviewed already share their metadata on tourismdata.ch. For more details on the findings, please download the slides from the workshop presentation by clicking on the image below.
Development of the IT Systems and Provider Landscape
The IT systems and provider landscape was developed as part of our subproject Data Model and Architecture. In the period of July – October 2023 our team visited and interviewed 13 tourism organisations in Switzerland and in neighbouring Austria.
Our goal was to understand what IT systems and service providers do these organisations use, for what purposes and more importantly, what data is shared and used. Our interview partners shared insights from their organisations and informed us about the most important IT providers and systems.
The landscape above is the result of the conducted interviews. It is not a complete picture, but contains selected information on systems and providers. The graphic should not be interpreted as an overview of the entire market for available services and solutions.
The IT service provider landscape was presented and discussed during the NaDIT workshop on 31 October in Bern. Click on the image below to download the slides from the workshop.
