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

In tourism statistics it is becoming more and more important to identify data sources that are more timely and cheaper than the traditional ones, such as surveys. In this paper, we investigate how mobile phone data (MPD), electronic payments data and internet search data (Google Trends) can improve the compilation of tourism statistics and the 'travel' item in the Balance of Payments (BoP). We find that MPD have the potential to improve the estimates of the number of international travelers and can be integrated with surveys, although a constant interaction with the data supplier is required to identify the phenomena to be captured. We highlight the limitations and issues in using electronic payment data for estimating expenditure in tourism statistics, and we propose a model for producing more timely preliminary estimates for BoP purposes. Finally, we point out that Google Trends data can be used to complement the sample estimates of international travelers and to improve the quality of provisional data