Unlocking the potential of tracking technology for co-created tourism planning and development: Insights from the Tourism Tracer Tasmania project

The tourism industry and governments have typically been slow to embrace technology and data analytics as planning and development tools. The Tourism Tracer team in Tasmania, Australia, believed it could use technology to help industry and government better understand where tourists go in Tasmania and collect other information about them. From the beginning the team collaborated with industry and government in the creation of key aspects of the project, including survey questions, recruitment design, Dashboard features and functionalities and reporting. The team designed an app which collected locational and survey data from approximately 1,000 tourists. This data was then disseminated back to the community in a variety of ways including being visualised on the Tourism Tracer Tasmania Dashboard. Further specific data analytics were sought for infrastructure planning, road safety planning, and a better understanding of conversion and dispersal. With clear benefits flowing to so many stakeholders, data and analysis platforms such as Tourism Tracer should be regarded as key infrastructure which delivers ‘public goods’ to the tourism industry and wider community. The paper argues that while the value of technologies such as Tourism Tracer are widely recognised many governance and funding issues remain.