Data as a Design Material explored how tourism data could reveal opportunities for more sustainable and distributed tourism across the province of Bergamo. We compared six regions within the province, looking into visitor numbers, demographics, accommodation, transport, activities, and economic data to identify patterns and opportunity spaces.
Our analysis highlighted Val Cavallina as a particularly interesting opportunity and as a tourist destination other regions could learn from: it had the lowest number of visitors and accommodation capacity, yet showed significant visitor growth. Further research revealed strong potential around local food, outdoor activities, and agritourism.
We translated these findings into a dataset and tourism activity index, making the data itself a design material for exploring and communicating opportunities. We explored concepts focused on promoting local experiences to encourage visitors to extend day trips into multi-day journeys and redistribute tourism from Bergamo Città into the valleys.
Through our concepts, we demonstrated how the dataset and index could become tools from which stakeholders can draw insights that can be used to inform their decision-making and future planning.
A key learning was how structuring and visualising data can uncover relationships that are difficult to see in isolation, turning quantitative research into a foundation for design intervention.
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