Can Mobile Phone Data Improve the Measurement of International Tourism in France?

Since July 2015, the Banque de France and the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance have been experimenting with the use of mobile phone data to estimate the number and overnight stays of foreign visitors in France. The purpose of the experiment is to assess the ability of such data to eventually replace, in part or in whole, the traffic data by mode of transport currently used to establish the representativeness of foreign visitor surveys (Enquete aupres des visiteurs venant de l’etrangers or EVE). Mobile phone data have yet to be incorporated into the method used to count tourists. However, estimates based on mobile phone data have a number of benefits in terms of the time required to obtain data, the level of temporal and geographical detail and short-term trend monitoring. This ongoing trial illustrates the difficulty of exploiting original Big Data and demonstrates the importance of drawing on traditional survey data to improve the quality of estimates.