Can mobile phone data assess the impact of sanitary crises on tourism ? The cases of Covid-19 and swine fever in Wallonia

Like many other sectors, tourism has been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis over the last two years. The confinements and border closures imposed by the authorities have brought the sector to a nearly complete halt. There are many other contexts in which restrictive legislations have been introduced impacting the sector. The objective of the research is to highlight the effects of restrictive legislation on tourism statistics through two examples, the first containment imposed during the Covid-19 crisis (2020) and the swine fever health crisis (2018) with the prohibition of circulating in the forest to control the spread of the disease. We use mobile phone data acquired on the basis of a methodology developed with the mobile phone operator Proximus, the market leader in Wallonia (Nyns & Schmitz, 2022). The analyses are based on the comparison of these data at different periods before and during the crisis. They also contribute to address the issues of validity, reliability, and accuracy of this type of data.
Nyns, S. & Schmitz, S. 2022. Using mobile data to evaluate unobserved tourist overnight stays, Tourism Management 89, 14p. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2021.104453