Tourism Data Category
TRAFFIC AND MOBILITY DATA
Traffic and mobility data can be understood as the movement data of individuals. This data can be used to identify trends, understand visitor behaviour and optimise services according to demand. In the following section, you will find data sources on the rail, air, cable car and road transport.
Mobility Data
The Open Data Platform Mobility Switzerland is an information platform for Swiss public transport and individual transport, where mobility is available free of charge. The website provides access to various APIs such as road traffic counters, journey forecasts, locations of shared mobility services and much more. The website hosts a variety of other mobility-related datasets, such as timetable information and the number of half-fare cards and GA travelcards in Switzerland.
Train Frequencies
The SBB (Swiss Federal Railways) shares daily information about the actual service provided per day. An aggregated overview of the transportation services by SBB can be found on their reporting website.
Detailed information on SBB-managed stations in Switzerland is available on the SBB website.
Frequencies of Service Provider
The number of frequencies of individual service providers in the tourism sector may be published on their own website, or sometimes aggregated data is published by a cantonal statistical office.
For example, the Swiss Museum of Transport publishes its entries in its annual report and lustat statistik luzern publishes a statistic on museum entries on an annual basis.
Mountain Railway Frequencies
The website of the national Association of Cable Cars in Switzerland (SBS) publishes data about mountain railways and cable car usage in Switzerland.
Road Frequencies
Below data on frequencies on the road are available. These frequencies are divided into motorised private transport, pedestrians and bicycle traffic.
Motorized Private Transport
The Federal Roads Office (ASTRA) counts frequencies on Swiss roads. A dataset about the traffic counters along major Swiss roads is available on the Open Data Platform Mobility Switzerland. Additionally the site provides an API for real-time information.
Several companies offer traffic surveys and customised tracking solutions. To name a few:
Pedestrians
There are some cantons and cities in Switzerland that count pedestrians and bikes. An overview of available data is visible on the website of Monitoring Fussvelo.
The city of Zurich, for example, tracks pedestrians on various streets in the city, and the data is publicly available.
There are several companies that offer specific pedestrian tracking solutions, often based on Wifi signals. To name a few:
Bicycle Traffic
The Monitoring Fussvelo website provides information on bicycle traffic in Swiss cantons and cities.
For example, the canton of Zurich and the city of Lucerne track bicycle traffic, but the data is not publicly available.
Frequencies in Destinations
Often information on frequencies in destinations are collected and published by Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) on a monthly basis. Some destinations provide more in-depth numbers or even access to dashboards. To name a few:
If a destination uses (digital) guest cards, this allows for further tracking of guest behaviour in a destination. These data points would be available to the DMO.
Airport Traffic
Information on civil aviation in Switzerland is available on the website of the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA). Detailed information is published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office.
The website flightradar24 visualizes air traffic and provides further information about every flight like the aircraft type, departure and arrival destination and other flight-relevant information. OAG is a data platform for the global airline industry and provides various datasets from flight schedules to flight seat data and even passenger booking data. Some datasets can be downloaded free of charge. Another source of air traffic data is the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
OurAirports is an open-source project where visitors can find facility, flight and weather information from airports around the world. The information is open data and can therefore be used and downloaded without any permission.
Boat Traffic
Real-time marine tracking is available at marinetraffic.com. On a paid plan, various historical data exports from vessel positions to port calls and vessel meta information are available. VesselFinder is another platform that provides historical AIS (Automatic Identification System) data. Vessel traffic data for the US and surrounding oceans is publicly available at Marine Cadastre.
Overnight Stays
Data on overnight stays in Switzerland are published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. They offer two main statistics the tourist accommodation statistics (HESTA) and supplementary accommodation statistics (PASTA). Eurostat’s data on booking platforms provide insight into nights booked through Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) such as booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor.
Mobile Data
Tracked mobile data, whether via Wifi, Bluetooth or GPS, can be used to better understand visitor flows or as an indicator of the number of visitors to a particular location. Swisscom provides this type of information on its Mobility Insights platform.
Data Source missing?
Do you know other important tourism-related data sources which are not mentioned above. Inputs about further data sources are welcome. Please contact us.
This website was created as part of Resilient Tourism Project (Suproject 1: - National Data Infrastructure for Tourism). Resilient Tourism is one of 15 flagship projects approved and supported by the Innosuisse- Swiss Innovation Agency. Flagship projects are systemic and transdisciplinary innovations that are central to current and future economic and social challenges in Switzerland.