The Role of Tourism Data Spaces for Smart, Inclusive and Sustainable Destinations

This chapter examines the role of tourism data spaces as a transformative tool for enhancing tourists’ experiences in the present digital era. These spaces are presented as federated, secure and interoperable environments that enable ethical data-sharing among tourism stakeholders, such as public institutions, private companies and local communities. The chapter provides a conceptual foundation for understanding how tourism data spaces contribute to enhancing tourists’ experiences while ensuring smart, inclusive and sustainable tourism. The main contribution of the chapter lies in demonstrating how tourism data spaces enhance tourists’ experiences through the integration of heterogeneous data sources as well as real-time data, artificial intelligence solutions, the Internet of Things and collaborative governance. The chapter identifies key domains in which tourism data spaces add value: hyper-personalisation, visitor flow management, unbalanced tourism, crisis prevention and anticipation, inclusive service design and environmental sustainability.