Official Tourism Statistics

MPD is an internationally recognised source for producing timely official statistics on tourism

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When analysing and planning tourism on a national level, having the latest and most accurate data is key. By tapping into our years of research, Positium uses a methodology which:

distinguishes tourism from non-tourism noise
applies international standards (IMF, UNWTO, OECD, Eurostat) on tourism statistics
produces reliable tourism statistics.

Positium has helped two countries – Estonia and Indonesia – measure visitor arrival numbers, and the data is published as official statistics. Positium uses the International Recommendation of Tourism Statistics 2008 as a guideline for its methodology.

Our preferred software for the analysis of MPD is Positium Data Mediator, which is designed to reliably process and filter raw mobile positioning data into trusted tourism statistics. Positium Data Mediator is the result of accumulating the learnings from 10 years of experience of producing official tourism statistics.

It is a pleasure to work with Positium who completed all the projects successfully and on time and we have had excellent communication with the Positium team. Currently, Positium continues to assist the Ministry of Tourism, Republic of Indonesia with the cross-border tourism statistics calculation on a service level agreement contract.

- Rizk Handayani, Deputy Minister for Marketing, Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of Indonesia

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Mobile phone data has a remarkably high level of completeness and coverage for travel and border crossing statistics.

- Jaanus Kroon, Head of the Statistics Department at Eesti Pank

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Mobile Positioning Data Helping Reach SDGs in Indonesia

In a country with 17,000+ islands and vast land borders, it is difficult to measure immigration at all entry points to the country. Roaming MPD-based indicators was used to measure cross-border tourism, so that the decision-makers of the state would have reliable statistics. With the help of Positium, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism developed a system to count tourists in these excluded border areas and support sustainable development with the help of accurate data. The results guided investments into areas that were previously considered periphery. The data collection continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a continuous source of visitor arrival data, covering official and informal travel into the country.

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Estonia Leads the Production of Tourism Statistics Using Mobile Positioning Data

In 2008, due to the financial crisis, the Estonian government was forced to make drastic budget cuts. One of the areas affected was the production of official statistics. The quarterly cross-border surveys that the country relied on at the time for estimating international arrivals were put on hold. One of the institutions affected by these changes was Eesti Pank, the central bank of Estonia, which is responsible for producing external sector statistics, among other official data. Since there was a demand for a high-quality and efficient data source for tourism statistics, at a reasonable cost, Eesti Pank acted quickly. They began to explore options for alternative data sources to fulfil their obligation of producing a time series of inbound and outbound travel statistics as part of their calculation for the balance of payments.

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