The Importance of Business Intelligence and Analytics in the Development of Health Tourism Destinations

Paweł Stelmach, Patrycja Ozga-Gwóźdź, Dominik Jurasiński

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of the article is to identify and explain the importance of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) in health destination development.

Design/methodology/approach

The article uses a qualitative approach based on the analysis of scientific literature on the subject and an exploratory comparative case study of tourism and health destinations.

Findings

The importance of BI&A in the development of health destinations is to provide information in making decisions about the directions of development of the business model (BM). BI&A in health destinations can be utilized to create new BMs by using the BM analytics elements based on multiple data sources. Full-scale BI&A systems in health destinations are very rare and difficult to find, even in tourism destinations, not only in Central Europe but also in the world.

Research limitations/implications

Our research contributes to the theory of destination management using advanced information systems technology, recognizing the importance of BI&A use in health tourism destinations. The main limitation of the study is the reliance on secondary sources and not reaching for primary sources at the stage of selecting cases, which could have contributed to not capturing a larger number of BI&A class systems in tourist and health destinations.

Practical implications

BI&A systems are not only the acquisition and analysis of large datasets but also a comprehensive set of both hidden and explicit premises for drawing conclusions based on detailed connections between the generated information and the knowledge that is the basis for constructing BMs of health destinations.

Originality/value

The article recognizes the importance of BI&A use in health destinations. The broader the range of data sources used, the greater the scope for analytics used in a destination’s BI&A. The challenge of health destinations is to create BI&A ecosystems in which data are obtained and processed into knowledge-supporting management decisions about the future of BMs. Health destinations should gradually implement BI&A based on an increasing variety of data sources.