Open Data and tourism
Use Open Data to prepare your holiday trip
With the summer holidays just around the corner, people are planning trips to numerous places all over Europe. Finding the right travel destination is not always easy, with a lot of competitive destinations throughout Europe. And what kind of activities can be undertaken at your destination? Here, Open Data can help out - both for the preparation of your trip as well as for travel information on the spot. And there is Open Data for all kind of travel purposes, regardless of whether you are going to visit a city, explore nature or relax on the beaches.
For instance, 695 datasets are found for "camping" on the European Data Portal. An example is a dataset originating from Saarland, one of the sixteen Bundesländer of Germany. It presents the campsites in the Saarland area. Similar information can be found for Vienna. If you prefer a hotel over a camping, then other datasets might be of more interest to you, showing for instance hotels in the German city of Rostock.
But once you have found your destination, what are the best things to do and see on your holidays? Again, Open Data helps out. There are numerous datasets available on the European Data Portal that show tourist information, such as points of interest: for instance points of interest on Sardegna, Italy. As you can see in the figure depicted below, this Italian island is full of points of interests. The same is true for tourist attractions located within Barrow borough Councils administrative area (United Kingdom).
Do you still need to prepare your trip or would you like to know what kind of activities you can undertake at your holiday destination? Use Open Data, and explore the data available on the European Data Portal! Search for instance on "tourism" or "holidays"