Tourism: a fast-changing sector

‍TheFrench tourism sector faces a major challenge: how can data be used more effectively to adjust marketing plans, make investment projects more reliable and better steer the spin-offs generated, even though statistics are highly disparate, insufficiently responsive and often difficult for its players to access? Given the sector's strong recovery, a better understanding of customers and flows is essential, as is the growing demand from all stakeholders for accurate measurement of tourism's economic, social and environmental impacts. However, the industry is struggling to exploit the full potential of its own data. This raises crucial issues for the sector's sovereignty and strategic autonomy. In the absence of data pooling and sharing between public and private tourism players, not only would an essential steering and competitiveness tool be lost, but other entities could take advantage of it, motivated by interests other than the common good and France's tourism development.‍

Data as the sector's new driving force

‍Inthe context of European recommendations on data sharing and under the impetus of public authorities, Atout France (State Operator in charge of France's tourism development with GIE status bringing together over 1100 members is launching in 2021 " the France Tourisme Observation platform" to make tourism sector data management autonomous and offer a framework of trust where all partners, public and private, can deposit and access data sets and analyses in various formats (dashboard, barometer...) for general interest purposes. These data include understanding consumer behavior, forecasting visitor numbers, assessing economic, social and environmental impacts, and monitoring the sector's ecological transition. The aim is to have a tool that processes both hot data of a cyclical nature and more structural data with a forward-looking dimension, in order to support sustainable transformation and steer the Destination France Plan.

The rapid deployment of this platform is based on a 100% French sovereign technology, Cleyrop, which guarantees a secure and trusted framework for data. Cleyrop provides turnkey software to manage the entire data lifecycle: collection, storage, transformation, analysis and sharing to accelerate and improve decision-making. Founded in 2020, the company's ambition is to democratize and liberate the uses of data by both public and private organizations, within a framework that respects European regulations and values. France Tourisme Observation is a pioneering and benchmark project for Cleyrop. It illustrates the value that the pooling of public and private data can create for the general public, and the benefits that a ready-to-use turnkey solution can bring in accelerating these initiatives.

Towards initial results

‍In2021, a first flagship use case saw the light of day: a barometer for real-time monitoring of attendance and bookings in France's outdoor hotel industry, in partnership with the FNHPA and ADN Tourisme. This innovation enables campsite professionals to automatically transmit their attendance indicators (sales and bookings) from their digital marketing systems, fundamentally changing our knowledge of the sector's economic dynamics on D+7, with analyses broken down by region and department. The data submitted by nearly 1,500 campsites is, of course, anonymized to respect business secrecy. This year, Atout France and Cleyrop also teamed up to take part in a competition organized by BPI France, a winning partnership which resulted in a prize in the "TechSprint for the Green Tourism Target". The prize won will be used to create a new tool for measuring, monitoring and simulating the resource consumption of tourism operators on France Tourisme Observation, in partnership with Enedis and Suez. More than 100 partners have already signed up to the platform, and new functionalities are already planned, including new barometers for the rental sector and for tourist spending by the French and international clientele. These tools will be very useful in supporting the implementation of the future Sustainable Tourism Scoreboard and the roll-out of a call for expressions of interest specifically dedicated to the technical and financial support of investment projects with a very strong sustainable component as part of the Destination France Plan.

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"For us, the France Tourisme Observation project perfectly embodies Cleyrop's philosophy. Together with Atout France, we are committed to transforming the French tourism industry using data to enhance its attractiveness and develop new, more responsible models. All this while offering maximum security within a European framework that respects personal data. So we're delighted to be playing a full part in this large-scale project to transform the French tourism industry!" emphasizes Stéphane Messika, co-founder of Cleyrop.

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Press coverage:
👉 L'Usine Digitale article
‍👉 Decideo article