T20 - Tourism Ministers Meet in Korea to discuss ICT and Government 2.0
As many of you know, I don’t find things effective if we cant measure the success. As I am about to speak at the T.20 Tourism (Dr. Ng Yen Yen discusses it in her blog) ministers Meeting in Buyeo, Korea, I thought a bit of comment and a challenge would be great.
The tourism stats for the past decade from the UNWTO are below.
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(unit : thousand) | |||||||||
| Country | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| Republic of Korea |
5,322 | 5,147 | 5,347 | 4,753 | 5,818 | 6,023 | 6,155 | 6,448 | 6,891 | 7,818 |
| Argentina | 2,909 | 2,620 | 2,820 | 2,995 | 3,457 | 3,823 | 4,173 | 4,562 | 4,665 | 4,329 |
| Australia | 4,931 | 4,856 | 4,841 | 4,746 | 5,215 | 5,499 | 5,532 | 5,644 | 5,586 | 5,584 |
| Brazil | 5,313 | 4,773 | 3,785 | 4,133 | 4,794 | 5,358 | 5,017 | 5,026 | 5,050 | 4,802 |
| Canada | 19,627 | 19,679 | 20,057 | 17,534 | 19,145 | 18,771 | 18,265 | 17,935 | 17,142 | 15,771 |
| China | 31,229 | 33,167 | 36,803 | 32,970 | 41,761 | 46,809 | 49,913 | 54,720 | 53,0149 | 50,875 |
| France | 77,190 | 75,202 | 77,012 | 75,048 | 74,433 | 74,988 | 77,916 | 80,853 | 79,218 | 74,200 |
| Germany | 18,983 | 17,861 | 17,969 | 18,399 | 20,137 | 21,500 | 23,569 | 24,421 | 24,884 | 24,224 |
| India | 2,649 | 2,537 | 2,384 | 2,726 | 3,457 | 3,919 | 4,447 | 5,082 | 5,283 | 5,109 |
| Indonesia | 5,064 | 5,153 | 5,033 | 4,467 | 5,321 | 5,002 | 4,871 | 5,506 | 6,234 | 6,324 |
| Italy | 41,181 | 39,563 | 39,799 | 39,604 | 37,071 | 36,513 | 41,058 | 43,654 | 42,734 | 43,239 |
| Japan | 4,757 | 4,772 | 5,239 | 5,212 | 6,138 | 6,728 | 7,334 | 8,347 | 8,351 | 6,790 |
| Mexico | 20,641 | 19,810 | 19,667 | 18,665 | 20,618 | 21,915 | 21,353 | 21,370 | 22,637 | 21,454 |
| Russia | - | 19,457 | 21,279 | 20,443 | 19,892 | 19,940 | 20,149 | 20,605 | 21,566 | 19,420 |
| Saudi Arabia |
6,585 | 6,727 | 7,511 | 7,332 | 8,599 | 8,037 | 8,620 | 11,531 | 14,757 | 10,896 |
| South Africa |
5,872 | 5,787 | 6,430 | 6,505 | 6,678 | 7,369 | 8,396 | 9,091 | 9,592 | 7,012 |
| Turkey | 9,586 | 10,783 | 12,790 | 13,341 | 16,826 | 20,273 | 18,916 | 22,248 | 24,994 | 25,506 |
| UK | - | - | 22,307 | 22,787 | 25,678 | 28,039 | 30,654 | 30,870 | 30,142 | 28,033 |
| USA | 51,237 | 46,927 | 43,581 | 41,218 | 46,086 | 49,206 | 50,977 | 55,979 | 57,937 | 54,884 |
| Spain | 47,898 | 50,094 | 52,327 | 50,854 | 52,430 | 55,914 | 58,004 | 58,666 | 57,192 | 52,231 |
| Belgium | 6,457 | 6,452 | 6,720 | 6,690 | 6,710 | 6,747 | 6,995 | 7,045 | 7,165 | 6,814 |
 Reference : UNWTO, Compendium of Tourism Statistics(06, 08, 10), World Tourism Barometer(2010. 6) |
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As I believe Government as a platform efforts (and Gov2.0 in general) should be measured by real business statistics and not simply ICT related KPI’s it would be great to start having our countries compete strongly on their competitiveness with regard to the amount of tourism interest they generate (or growth of tourism activity).
I say this partly because my pitch today is to connect your Government’s ICT but also to connect your governments general operations. As governments embrace this type of reform, and open government data is a great place to start, we should start to see an impact in this area of interest. As our governments become more open and engaging, the locale will start to attract multiple things: foreign investment, permanent immigration and, yes, increased tourist activity (which is a great boon to the local economies and small businesses located in the country).
So, lets all drive our countries to compete for tourism dollars. And let our cultural prowess be expressed through open government data initiatives targeting the outcome of increased tourist activity instead of just ICT oriented outputs.