How Big Data can help the strategies of food and wine tourism

Technological advances have made it possible, even in tourism, to overcome the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, allowing for the collection of a huge amount of different data (Big Data): if properly collected, labelled and interrogated, these data open up new possibilities for rapid, detailed and predictive research, characteristics that the traditional statistical sources are not able to fully satisfy.

It is possible to investigate the food and wine tourist by monitoring aggregate consumption or spending behaviour; investigating trends and differences in the various incoming markets; studying their mobility and routes.

It is also possible to obtain tools for analysis to govern flows within both small (rapidly saturable) areas and large territories, preventing the phenomena of overtourism that have already occurred during the recovery, albeit in different areas compared to 2019. Even more so today: With the pandemic, every previous ranking has gone out and the "old" research has lost its statistical reference value.

We have an urgent need for new data capable of photographing a constantly changing situation so as to create new strategies and flexible models of action. More than ever before, food and wine tourism needs to rely on new indicators and new information in order to predict scenarios, evolution of behaviours and to implement the appropriate strategies that affect the decision-making process.

It is precisely regarding the speed of reaction, in fact, that the new structures and the future competitiveness of the various countries will be established.