Data-driven Initiatives of Destinations Supporting Sustainable Tourism

Digitization has arrived at the heart of global tourism. However, due to challenges such as climate change and overtourism, touristic destinations not only need to become more digital but also more sustainable. Although ever-increasing quantities of touristic data provide a growing basis for innovative digital solutions, destinations vary widely in driving sustainable, data-driven initiatives due to uncertain targets and challenging data acquisition. Despite its rising importance, research still lacks a thorough understanding of how destinations can use data to become more sustainable. We build on interviews with ten destination management organizations (DMOs) to develop a taxonomy of their data-driven initiatives for sustainable tourism to address this issue. Our findings contribute to research by bridging the gap between available data sources and important targets of data-driven initiatives from the unique perspective of touristic destinations. For practice, we provide a structured overview for positioning own ambitions of DMOs.