How Can Big Data Improve the Quality of Tourism Statistics? The Bank of Italy’s Experience in Compiling the “Travel” Item of the Balance of Payments

In tourism statistics, the search for timelier and cheaper data sources than the traditional ones, like surveys, is becoming more and more important. In this chapter, we investigate how mobile phone data (MPD), electronic payment data, and Internet search data (Google Trends) can improve the compilation of tourism statistics and the “travel” item of the balance of payments. We find that MPD have the characteristics to improve the estimates on the number of international travelers and to be integrated with the survey, although a constant interaction with the data supplier is required to define the phenomena to be caught. We highlight the limitations and the issues related to the use of electronic payment data for estimating tourism expenditures and we propose a model for producing timelier preliminary estimates. Finally, we show that Google Trends data can be used to complement the sample estimates of international travelers and to improve the quality of provisional data.