The Infrastructure of Tourism Data

The shift toward the transformation of the tourism model proposed in this book, moving beyond sustainability toward regenerative approaches, requires identifying and consolidating the structural elements that make such change possible. The central aim of this chapter is to examine the role of data infrastructure as the material, organizational, and cognitive foundation of tourism intelligence, understood not merely as a set of tools, but as a strategic capacity of the destination to understand, anticipate, and steer its own development.
This chapter adopts a structural perspective on tourism intelligence by shifting the focus from outcomes or specific applications to the underlying conditions that enable its operability. As Gretzel et al. (2015) argue, intelligence does not arise from data alone, but from their integration into systems capable of generating actionable knowledge. In this sense, data infrastructure (encompassing types of information, technologies, processes, and governance frameworks) constitutes an essential pillar in the transition from data to intelligence, with direct implications for advanced sustainability and tourism regeneration.
From the perspective of complex tourism systems, destinations can be understood as networks of interrelated actors in which organizational structures shape coordination and adaptive capacity (Baggio and Cooper, 2010). Data infrastructure makes these interdependencies visible and supports more informed management approaches, contributing to an integrated understanding of how the destination functions in relation to its territory and local community.