Industry Insights on Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Visitor Management in Times of Corona

The tourism sector is heavily affected by the COVID-19 crisis. While some destinations are cut off from international tourism streams, others suffer from overcrowding due to limited travel options and a significant increase in recreational day trips. At the same time, the pandemic accelerates and drives digital transformation processes in the tourism economy and provides opportunities for destinations to better manage visitor streams through digital tourism platforms such as Outdooractive. Drawing on insights from Outdooractive research projects in Germany, practical solutions to support holistic digital visitor management strategies based on data spaces and artificial intelligence technologies are presented. Experiences from Germany show that there is a clear need for collaboration, governance and open data leadership to provide effective solutions for sustainable visitor management.

You can see PPT slide here.

 In cooperation with Martin Soutschek

Dominik Huber works as a Research Manager in the R&D department at Outdooractive in Immenstadt, Germany. His background is in human geography and after working his way through various geography departments in Germany, Dominik moved to the Swiss mountains to survey mountain huts in the Valais Alps. Because his ambitions to discover the world did not stop in Switzerland, he moved to New Zealand when he was selected for a doctoral scholarship at the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute at AUT University in Auckland. After he obtained his PhD, Dominik progressed his career as lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington, worked as research assistant at OTH Regensburg in Bavaria and conducted a postdoc at NZTRI in Auckland. Back in Germany, he decided to change his career path and apply his scientific skills to support the Outdooractive development. Dominik’s main areas of interest at Outdooractive relate to visitor management and overcrowding phenomena, data analytics and sustainable tourism development. In his role as Research Manager he leads innovation projects and supervises graduate theses, which allows him to continue working in the university environment. Dominik has published various research articles in top tier tourism journals (IJTR, Tourism Management Perspectives) and presented his research at multiple international conferences.