DESTINATION MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION

Amsterdam&Partners is the Destination Management Organization (DMO) of the Amsterdam metropolitan area, a public-private foundation established in 2013 out of the merger of three pre-existing organizations. Its activities are dedicated to enhance the livability, attractiveness, sustainability and inclusivity of Amsterdam and its surroundings by informing and activating residents, companies, visitors and business partners.

The organization operates based on a network model designed to directly involve stakeholders that consists of more than 800 partners (including businesses, government bodies, cultural institutions, and research institutes).

DESTINATION CONTEXT, OBJECTIVES AND NEEDS

Since its founding, a primary objective of the city DMO has been to create connections and exchange flows of valuable data within the cultural and commercial fabric that constitutes the core of Amsterdam’s tourism offering and attractiveness. Therefore, the DMO has had to become the primary collector of visitor data, needed to:

• Strengthen partnerships with and within the sector. In addition to integrating official data coming from National Statistics offices (top down), the city management also needed to adopt a bottom-up data collection model at the local level. This required the direct involvement of industry operators and cultural organizations.
• Promptly Inform the decision-making process. Visitor data collected on a regular basis, can provide valuable decision-making information , not just at the individual organization level, but also at the city policy level.

IMPLEMENTED SOLUTION

To reach these goals Amsterdam&Partners, with the support of a local IT company, developed a data visualization platform called Visitor Insight: a comprehensive set of dashboards that provide different views of the city visitor economy. Available information include accommodation data, weather updates, events, transit data (e.g. airport traffic, cruises). Moreover, tourist attractions directly upload first-hand visitor data (monthly or, in some cases, even weekly) to the platform. The solution is:

• Multi layered. Different stakeholders have different forms of access to the tool according to their needs and degree of involvement. City attractions (including museums, theaters and others) are granted free access to gain insights about the general health of the city’s visitor economy and visitation trends. If they contribute to the platform by providing data, they unlock advanced features which also allow them to perform benchmark analyses and understand their market positioning. In addition, some dashboards are public and freely accessible online to anyone  interested in collecting general data (e.g., visitor growth rates, overnight stays, international arrivals).
• User friendly. The platform front-end interface is extremely simple and intuitive, both for data entry and data visualization.
• Industry specific. Each partner can authorize different levels of detail in sharing data, so that the degree of data granularity changes according to the different categories of organizations; cultural institutions make their visitor data fully available to all other similar institutions because they find it useful to compare with each other in a non-business environment. On the other hand, profit making companies only allow data to be processed in an aggregate , so that they can benefit from benchmarking without sharing sensitive performance indicators with competitors.
• Flexible. According to the evolving needs of the destination, the platform can be integrated by new and different data modules.

MAIN BENEFITS

Real-time responsiveness to decision-making needs. Constantly updated, extensive data about city visitor behavior and trends  can inform and direct policy making. After the Covid period, the ability of cultural institutions to develop a “collective voice” to advocate their interests to the Municipality, backed with evidence provided by Visitor Insight, was crucial to tackle relevant funding issues. For example, data about visitor flows was used by cultural institutions to renegotiate the amount of financial aid granted by the Municipality after the post lockdown reopening.

Widespread data culture. Even cultural institutions and small local businesses are incentivized, by using the platform both as data providers and users, to strengthen their data collection procedures and to take increasingly data-oriented strategic decisions. 

Adaptability and customization. The Visitor Insight platform is scalable, as it can be easily adapted to the needs and desires of other destinations. Upon payment of a first  initial installation and an annual fee, other DMOs can obtain the use of the platform and create customized data modules, dashboards, and features. Three other cities (Berlin, Stockholm, and Utrecht) are already adopting the solution.

MAIN CHALLENGES

Intra-destination partnerships. As new tourist attractions and businesses enter the city market it is crucial to constantly include them in the project as data partners. New partnership agreements are an organizational effort in terms of time and resources, especially as they entail convincing operators – often small, non-data-driven– about the individual and collective benefits of the tool. Nevertheless, by being able to acquire an increasingly significant role in the city scenario, the Visitor Insight tool has the chance to be perceived as a “must have” for city attractions. 

Inter-destination relationships. A constant process of review and update of the tool is in place, involving at different levels all the destinations that currently adopt it. As the number of client DMOs increases, managing cooperation will become increasingly challenging. Dealing with inter-DMO relational complexities will be crucial for Amsterdam&Partners to successfully position its product internationally.  

FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

Currently, new features are being tested with the aim of increasing sharing opportunities within the platform. New information pages were launched to allow all involved stakeholders to share valuable information of various kinds, including qualitative information, through the tool (i.e. cultural programs, events, research insights). The organization is now planning to implement API connections to embed new data sources and obtain real-time data.

By further enhancing the platform to facilitate information exchange, the Visitor Insight tool will succeed in maintaining a collaborative city environment to promote sustainable, data-driven destination development .