Open data for tourism: the case of Tourpedia

Purpose This paper aims to describe Tourpedia, a website about tourism, built on open data provided by official government agencies. Tourpedia provides data under a public license. Design/methodology/approach Tourpedia is built upon a modular architecture, which allows a developer to add a new source of data easily. This is achieved through a simple mapping language, namely, Tourpedia mapping language, which maps the original open data set model to the Tourpedia data model. Findings Tourpedia contains more than 70.000 accommodations, downloaded from open data provided by Italian, French and Spanish regions. Research limitations/implications Tourpedia presents some limitations. First, extracted data are not homogeneous and often they are incomplete or wrong. Second, Tourpedia contains only accommodations. Finally, at the moment Tourpedia covers only some Italian, French and Spanish regions. Practical implications The most important implication of Tourpedia concerns the construction of a single access point for all Italian, French and Spanish open data about accommodations. In addition, a simple mechanism for the integration of new sources of open data is defined. Social implications The current version of Tourpedia opens also the road to three new possible social scenarios. First, Tourpedia could be transformed into an open source of updated information about tourism. Second, Tourpedia could be empowered to support tours, which include some tourist attractions and/or events and suggest the nearest accommodations. Finally, Tourpedia may help tourists to discover unknown places. Originality/value Tourpedia constitutes an access point for data sets providers, application developers and tourists because it provides a unique website.