Tracked for good: How smart mobile data is revolutionising tourism insights and economic impact studies
Tourism Research Australia (TRA) plays a critical role in delivering high-quality tourism intelligence to support governments and Australian businesses attract more visitors. Since 1998, the TRA has conducted the National Visitor Survey (NVS), for tracking both international and domestic travel patterns.
Historically, the NVS has been administered via computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI), engaging a nationally representative random sample of between 60,000 and 120,000 Australian residents annually. Each seven-minute survey includes approximately 70 questions covering trip purpose, destinations, transport, accommodation, activities, and expenditure for both day and overnight domestic travel. Respondents are selected through random digit dialling to landlines and mobile phones, with results weighted against the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) population estimates to ensure reliable reporting at national, state, and regional levels.
However, the effectiveness of telephone surveying has declined significantly. Rising costs, reduced response rates due to call screening and the decline of landline use, and challenges in reaching younger and highly mobile demographics have made CATI less efficient and less representative of the Australian community overall.
The next generation of surveying
To modernise its approach, TRA has integrated monthly domestic mobility data into its tourism intelligence offerings. The Domestic Tourism Statistics (DoTS) innovation harnesses de-identified, aggregated data from millions of mobile phone devices, sourced from GPS signals, app interactions, and mobile network activity. The result is near real time, granular insights into how Australians move across the country.
What mobile phone data can and can’t tell us
Traditional TRA surveys or intercept studies for economic impact analysis typically capture five key metrics:
- Volume of travellers - based on a representative sample
- Origin and destination - where people came from and where they travelled to
- Length of stay - how long they remained in a location
- Expenditure - how much they spent
- Purpose of visit - holiday, work, family or travel specific to an event or attraction.
Mobile opt-in data can capture some of these metrics, not all. For example, what mobile data can estimate includes:
- Travel volumes
- Home location/origin, based on typical device patterns
- Length of stay in specific areas.
What mobile data cannot determine:
- Purpose of travel - for example, whether someone visited Melbourne specifically for the Australian Open or was visiting friends and chose to attend for a day
- Type of event attendance - for example spectator vs. official vs. media vs. team personnel at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix
- Accurate expenditure - some datasets can estimate spending, this is often imprecise due to pre-booked expenses and the exclusion of cash transactions. Banking data, which can fill these gaps, is often costly and incomplete.
Because of these limitations, the TRA and other economic impact studies increasingly use mobile data to enhance understanding of visitor origin and movement patterns. These insights are then mapped against intercept or online survey data to estimate spend and travel purpose across local, intrastate, interstate and international visitors.
Pros and cons of mobility data in tourism measurement
Pros
- Better timeliness - Data is available within two weeks of month-end, far faster than traditional survey reporting
- Improved representativeness - Mobile data covers every phone user in Australia (millions of users), resulting in larger, more representative and accurate samples than the 60,000 to 120,000 NVS survey participants
- Granular insights - Data can be analysed at smaller geographic units, such as all 76 tourism regions
- Transparency and privacy - Mobility data is anonymised and aggregated with strict thresholds to prevent identification.
Cons
- Privacy concerns - Even with aggregation and anonymisation, some individuals are wary of being 'tracked’. There is a risk of misuse without strict governance, especially as technology evolves
- Regional coverage - DoTS relies heavily on big data (5 billion mobility data points daily). While this is great for national totals, it can create blind spots for smaller regional levels
- Data biases - Gaps may persist for populations with low smartphone use, such as elderly groups or rural areas
- Methodological complexity - Requires advanced analytics and validation to ensure data quality
- Cost and partnerships - Securing data access via private providers can be costly or legally complex.
Is Australia leading or lagging? International comparisons in tourism data innovation
Australia is part of a growing group of countries pioneering the use of mobility data in official tourism statistics. Lithuania, for example, launched its Mobile Data Project in 2022, using anonymised mobile operator data to analyse visitor patterns. Their dashboards offer granular spatial and temporal insights, complementing traditional accommodation statistics and surveys.
Across the European Union (EU), several countries now incorporate Google Mobility Reports and mobile data to better understand tourism nights spent at regional levels. These methods far exceed the timeliness and detail of traditional survey-based approaches. By applying machine learning models to mobility data, nationals can accurately predict tourism demand and enable more agile responses from policymakers and tourism operators.
Key considerations when using tech to estimate tourism and economic impacts
Before using mobile opt in data in your next project, consider:
- Privacy and ethics
Ensure all data is de-identified and aggregated. Privacy is paramount and mobility data should not be able to reveal an individual’s identity. Clearly communicate how data is collected, used, and protected, this builds trust with both the public and industry users. - Understanding of limitations
Determine which elements of an economic impact assessment mobile opt-in data can support, and supplement it with intercept, email and phone surveys. Furthermore, opt-ins are becoming more overt, with a significant drop off in the number of mobile users with opt-ins turned on. This can significantly skew datasets. - Bias and representativity
International devices are often harder to capture, ensure datasets actively target them where relevant. - Experience undertaking economic impact analysis
Use a team with excellent economic impact analysis skills, has worked across a range of different tourism and major event products and has existing databases from prior assessments for benchmarks around origin, length of stay, daily spends and specific and extended stay for different types of events and attractions. - Stakeholder acceptance
Not all key reviewers are supportive of this data collection method, and this can undermine the acceptance of this data. There are several Treasury departments in Australian jurisdictions which are not yet comfortable with this data. - Validation and comparability
Cross-check mobility estimates with established survey and administrative datasets - update methodologies as new insights or biases emerge.
How BDO can help
Tourism measurement is undergoing a technological revolution, with mobility data offering real-time, privacy-respecting, and actionable insights to power the visitor economy forward.
What is key is a detailed understanding of the data combined with expertise in undertaking economic impact analysis. BDO's project & infrastructure advisory, sports & entertainment team has undertaken more than 200 economic impact studies and are trialling the use of mobile opt in data in combination with traditional sources, to support a more efficient and effective delivery of economic impact studies. Our team can benchmark mobile data results with our major events database to ensure data from mobile sources delivers a robust outcome.
Australia is at the forefront, but as both technology and public expectations evolve, negotiating the balance between innovation and ethics will remain crucial in this space. Contact us to find out more.
