Skip main navigation

What is Open Data?

What is open data? How is it relevant to tourism.
Another term you may have heard mentioned and will likely have handled whether knowingly or not. Open data can be a catalyst for the tourism industry to move forward. But what do we mean by open data?

Open data is data that can be freely used and shared by anyone for any purpose. According to the Open Data Handbook (2019), the conditions for open data are that it needs to be available and accessible, provided under terms that permit re-use and redistribution, and be available for universal participation regardless of intended use. Open data allows diverse organisations to collaborate, connecting their systems and sharing their data. Combining different datasets is key to developing better products and services, and this is where the true value of open data lies.

See some tourism-related examples here:

More on this topic will follow later in Week 4 when external tools are looked at and more broadly when discussing the benefits of destination-wide collaboration in Week 5.

© Edinburgh Napier University
This article is from the free online

Understanding Data in the Tourism Industry

Created by
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now