DEPLOYTOUR

The tourism sector is a major driver of Europe's economy, but it is highly fragmented and particularly vulnerable to external influences. As a result, the sector faces a number of challenges, particularly with regard to sustainability. To ensure that the tourism industry remains competitive and resilient, reliable and high-quality tourism data must be made available. This will enable the development of data-driven innovations that address the challenges mentioned above and optimize existing processes

The challenge 

The challenges in DEPLOYTOUR lie in setting up the data space for the entire European tourism sector. It must be ensured that the wide variety of characteristics of the sector are taken into account. The project is therefore already implementing five heterogeneous pilot implementations and deriving their requirements for the data space. One requirement is already apparent at the start of the project: the tourism sector consists almost exclusively of SMEs. Therefore, the project must also create a technical basis for onboarding small players. Furthermore, the planned interoperability with other tourism-related data spaces (local tourism data spaces, mobility data spaces, etc.) is central. Therefore, the focus is not exclusively on creating interoperability within the data space, but also outside it with other data spaces.

Our service   

The Fraunhofer ISST contributes to the project in particular with experience and knowledge gained from the development of Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC), the Data Spaces Support Center (DSSC) and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), as well as from existing data space initiatives. The institute is particularly involved in shaping the technical implementation and governance structure. Fraunhofer ISST is therefore particularly involved in shaping the technical architecture and implementation as well as the governance structure.

The result  

The result of the DEPLOYTOUR project is the establishment of the European Tourism Data Space (ETDS). This is one of the European Commission's 14 Common European Data Spaces and forms the basis for a data ecosystem in the tourism sector. Its successful implementation provides the technological and legal basis for making relevant data available to participants. Once the project is complete, the participants in the various pilot implementations will initially become part of the ETDS. Furthermore, the finished ETDS will create a framework for interoperability with other relevant data spaces.

The partners

The DEPLOYTOUR project brings together a diverse range of 43 partners from 13 countries:

The project on the web

https://deploytour.eu/

The funding

• Funder: European Union (EU)
• Funding number: [DIGITAL-2023-CLOUD-DATA-AI-05] — [Data Space for Tourism]
• Duration: 10/2024-09/2027

When summer arrives and we’re all packing our bags for our next vacation, each of us experiences firsthand just how important readily available, high-quality data is for travel. Of course, this is even more true for companies in the tourism sector. They need resilience, smart operational processes, and sound sustainability strategies. And to meet all these challenges, they need one thing: reliable data. In this episode of “Die Datenräumer”—the podcast from the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST focused on innovations driven by data—Maik Mannsfeld discusses how data usage in European tourism can be improved. He is the project manager at Fraunhofer ISST for the Deploytour project, which aims to establish a European data space for tourism.