The 6th edition of the International Conference on the Subnational Measurement and Economic Analysis of Tourism was held as a hybrid event hosted live in Bogotá by the District Institute of Tourism of the City Council of Bogotá, Colombia with the contribution of IN2destination research and consultancy in tourism and within the framework of INRouTe – International Network on Regional Economics Mobility and Tourism. 

Internationally renown speakers made worth the while for more than 1000 participants that followed MOVE2021 via youtube / zoom or live the event. The satisfaction survey shows excellent results for the quality of speakers, content and organisation of the event. Hence, we are deeply grateful to all the organisations that made this event possible, to all speakers and to all participants that made time in their schedule to follow this event that focused on Data Culture. 

We encourage you to visit MOVE2021 website to read about the speakers, also read the conference proceedings with the extended abstracts presented in the conference, and in this other link you can access the videos. Please note, they are being edited at this time towards their final version.  

The European Council launched a Public Consultation on the European Statistical Program and INRouTe took the opportunity to make a contribution about the need of a statistical framework for measuring tourism at subnational level adapting the 2008 International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (IRTS) and anticipate or address issues that occur at subnational levels, including at local tourism destinations, such as the problems of congestion and overtourism.

March 2021 has been a great month for our core focus: tourism statistics. There have been many interesting events and milestones, such as:

A side event of the Statistical Commission that we recommend you to watch if you were not able to follow it live is “High Level Discussion on Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism”, a side event to the United Nations Statistical Commission 52nd session. In this event UNWTO presented their advances in the initiative entitled: Towards a Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST), different countries explained their advances in this framework, shared their current priorities, challenges faced and how they are working to overcome them. Moreover, key private stakeholders advocated for more reliable data, including and the subnational level, sooner rather than later. Thank you UNSD and UNWTO for organising this event!

Another event that we would like to recommend is “Big Data Enabling Tourism Competitiveness” organised by the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union where Big Data use, how to, when to, is discussed smartly.