Using data to make decisions: opportunities and challenges for tourist cities
BIT SPECIAL TALKS

Using data to make decisions: opportunities and challenges for tourist cities

05/10/21 h 17:00 - 18:00

Produced by Business International in collaboration with Salesforce

Three experiences compared by the Interreg S.LI.DES project. Having useful data available to learn about a city and its performance is crucial to making decisions, especially in uncertain times. Whether it is a touristically popular city or an urban centre that is still little frequented, there is a growing need to develop sustainable tourism practices and at the same time improve the attractiveness and experience of tourist visits, whilst enhancing lesser known cultural resources, such as crafts. 

Financed by the Interreg Italy-Croatia Programme 2014-2020, the project S.LI.DES- Smart strategies for sustainable tourism in LIvely cultural DEStinations, aims at building a multidimensional data analysis system, which collects a range of updated information on partner cities and their territory (tourist, economic, social, environmental, cultural, reputation and attractiveness, etc.) into a single database, together with a model for measuring and monitoring urban pedestrian mobility and a dynamic map of artistic and traditional craft activities, which represent an important identity heritage for the local community.

Eleven partners are involved: the Department of Management of Ca' Foscari University of Venice, as leader; CISET-International Centre for Studies on Tourism Economics; ECIPA North East; CAST-University of Bologna; Institute for Tourism of Zagreb; Craft College of Rijeka and 5 cities, three of which are Italian (Venice and Bari, represented by their respective municipalities, and Ferrara, with SIPRO-Provincial Development Agency) and two Croatian ones (Dubrovnik, via the DURA-Territorial Development Agency and Sibenik via its Tourist Office). 

Local decision makers can access the S.LI.DES information system via the Internet, thanks to a user friendly Dashboard, which helps them to evaluate the tourist and non-tourist performance of their city and the trends for visitor flows in the area. This is useful data for designing and promoting alternative itineraries to discover the cultural heritage and other pilot schemes, with a view to sustainable tourism whilst currently respecting the constraints imposed by COVID, as well as supporting more efficient governance strategies.

 

The panel, organised by CISET - as coordinating partner in the development of the information system - will present the salient features of the project, highlight the difficulties that cities and tourist destinations in general currently encounter in developing decision-making systems based on integrated data-hubs and will contribute the experience of the three Italian partner cities - Venice, Ferrara and Bari -, which will illustrate how S.LI.DES fits into the initiatives already in place at urban level and the actions they intend to pursue within the project. 

 

Speakers

Valeria Minghetti

Research Area Manager, CISET - International Center for Studies on Tourism Economics

She is responsible for the research area of CISET - Centro Internazionale di Studi sull'Economia Turistica ("International Centre for Studies on Tourism Economics"), founded by Ca' Foscari University and the Veneto Region. She has over 20 years of experience in consultancy and training on tourism issues and has worked on several projects for national and international organisations (ISTAT, EUROSTAT, European Commission, UNWTO, OECD, etc.). She is currently the scientific manager for CISET of the Interreg ITA-HR project S.LI.DES (Smart strategies for sustainable tourism in LIvely cultural DEStinations) and coordinator, as part of the project, of the development of the information data hub and dashboard.

Elisabetta Piccin

Tourism Sector Manager, Municipality of Venice

With a degree in law from the University of Padua, she has been a manager of the City of Venice since 2010, assigned since 2017 to the Tourism Sector and Territorial Controls of the second level, and previously to the Construction Single Desk Directorate where she was in charge of Territory Control and compliance with safety standards. While at the City of Venice, she coordinated the drafting of the Territorial Governance Project for Tourism in Venice, approved by the City Council in 2017 and currently being implemented and updated.

Lisa Pietropaolo

Expert in cultural heritage, holder of the organizational position at the Culture Department, Municipality of Bari

Specialist in cultural heritage, she holds the "Culture" structural organisational position at the Department of Culture, Religions, Equal Opportunities, Communication, Territorial Marketing and Sport of the City of Bari. In this role, she coordinates cultural activities and initiatives, is responsible for implementing European territorial cooperation projects in tourism/culture and is the contact person for the implementation of unique public-private partnerships for cultural and museum enhancement. She is currently a member of the Regional Commission for Puglia's Cultural Heritage on behalf of the Puglia Region.

Massimo Poletti

SIT-Territorial Information System Manager, Municipality of Ferrara

He has been in charge of the Territorial Information Systems Service of the City of Ferrara since May 2019, for which he is following the digitalization process and the technological renewal of the Authority's infrastructures and procedures. An electronics engineer, he worked for 10 years in the private sector and then moved to the healthcare sector, where for 25 years, until early 2019, he was mainly involved in technological infrastructure and telecommunications.

Chairman

Domenico Palladino

Director, Qualitytravel.it

Domenico Palladino is a journalist and digital marketing consultant working in the tourism and event organisation industries. He graduated in business administration at Bocconi University and was a digital project manager for some of the most important tourism events in Italy before moving on to head the editorial staff of Webitmag, Fiera Milano Media’s travel tech magazine. Since 2017 he is publishing director of Qualitytravel.it, a historical magazine for tourism and mice professionals. In 2019, he wrote for Hoepli the handbook “Digital Marketing Extra Alberghiero” (Digital Marketing Extra for Hotels).