Beyond Visitor Numbers: Rethinking Tourism Impact at TourMIS

For two days in September, Modul University Vienna became a meeting point for people working on one of tourism’s most important questions: how can destinations understand not only how many people visit, but what tourism actually changes?

The 21st TourMIS Users’ Workshop & International Seminar, held at MU’s Kahlenberg campus on 10 and 11 September 2026, brought together professionals from tourism organizations, academia, and the wider industry. Organized by the European Travel Commission, City Destinations Alliance, Modul University Vienna and, for the first time, the Network of European Regions for Competitive and Sustainable Tourism, NECSTouR, the event connected practical data expertise with a broader conversation about tourism’s economic, social, and environmental impact.

The conversation began with the data itself.

On the first day, participants worked directly with TourMIS, Europe’s tourism marketing information system. Led by TourMIS founder Professor Karl Wöber, together with MU colleagues, the workshop explored how tourism statistics can be entered, analyzed, compared, and translated into useful market intelligence. Sessions moved from destination benchmarking and regional tourism statistics to topics such as tourism related CO2 emissions and tourist taxation.

But as the event moved into its second day, the perspective widened. The focus was no longer only on what destinations can measure. It shifted toward a more complex question: what should they be measuring, and why?

The International Seminar approached this question as a journey through different levels of tourism decision making.

At the European level, Bruno Castro of the European Commission opened the discussion by placing tourism impact within the wider policy context and highlighting the growing importance of approaches that look beyond traditional measures of tourism performance.

From there, the conversation moved to Switzerland. Milena Bärtschi of Switzerland Tourism presented the Travel Better philosophy, showing how a destination can think more broadly about balance. Visitor flows, the timing of travel, sustainability, and the acceptance of tourism by local communities all become part of the picture when success is viewed through more than arrival figures alone.

The perspective then moved from the national to the regional level. Daniel Iglesias and Daniel Caro introduced NECSTouR’s Tourism of Tomorrow Lab, an initiative working toward a shared set of sustainable tourism indicators for member regions by 2030. Their contribution raised an important challenge for destinations: meaningful measurement requires not only more information, but also a clearer understanding of which indicators can genuinely support long term decisions.

Jakob Kjeldgaard Fuglsang of Wonderful Copenhagen presented the Copenhagen Legacy Lab, illustrating how the value of a congress or major event can continue well beyond the moment when the final participant leaves. Investment, innovation, talent development, knowledge exchange, and community initiatives can all become part of an event’s longer term legacy.

Seen together, these perspectives told a larger story. Tourism impact does not exist at one single level. European priorities influence national strategies. National approaches shape regional action. Cities translate these ambitions into experiences that affect visitors, businesses, residents, and communities.

The afternoon brought the conversation back to the participants themselves.

Through speed networking and knowledge exchange, tourism professionals compared how their own destinations currently generate and measure impact. The format created space to discuss practical challenges, learn from different approaches, and consider how impact models could work in different local contexts.

The discussions also reinforced one of the central ideas of the seminar: there is no value in collecting data simply because it can be collected.

What does a destination want tourism to contribute? What should change as a result of tourism activity? Which indicators can show whether that change is happening? And how can that evidence inform the next strategic decision?

The first day demonstrated the power of tourism data and the tools available to understand it. The second asked participants to look beyond the numbers and consider what those numbers should ultimately help destinations achieve.