Explore Edmonton and D / AI Destinations: From data gaps to confident answers

The opportunity

Finding clarity amid fragmented tourism data

Explore Edmonton, the official destination marketing organisation for the city, had been working with tourism data for years. However, a shift in their data services left them without the key metrics they had come to rely on for reporting.

Explore Edmonton was seeking an alternate solution to gauge perceptions of their destination and was excited to see that Data Appeal was able to offer this service and much more including:

• Track sentiment and visitor behaviour in near real time and at a more granular level
• Gain visibility into flight demand, booking windows, and market fluctuations
• Understand travel seasonality and how it was evolving

Why choose Data Appeal

A flexible, granular solution for timely insights

Data Appeal’s D / AI Destinations platform was the solution. Designed to provide destinations with actionable insights that drive strategic decisions, the destination management and marketing platform combines real-time data with unparalleled flexibility and granularity, allowing users to analyse both high-level trends and specific segment-based performance.

With Data Appeal, destinations can track key metrics such as sentiment by traveller type, analyse flight search and booking patterns by origin market, and evaluate performance across various neighbourhoods or points of interest. The platform provides valuable insights into visitor trends, offering destinations the data they need to refine marketing strategies and enhance the visitor experience.

Data Appeal’s solution

Bridging gaps with immediate and relevant data, covering everything from flights to key trends

With D / AI Destinations, Explore Edmonton has been able to strengthen their internal processes, deliver better insights to stakeholders, and support more responsive, data-informed planning.

The platform’s ability to combine timely data with flexibility and granularity has truly set it apart, offering both a high-level overview and detailed, segment-specific insights.

This has enabled the team to benchmark sentiment by traveller type, filter searches and bookings by origin market, and break down performance by neighbourhood or point of interest.

Explore Edmonton now examines more detailed metrics—like sentiment shifts, visitor preferences, and perception across different segments—allowing them to uncover deeper insights that inform more precise, data-driven decisions.

The platform’s Flights and Destination modules have become essential tools for reporting, market monitoring, and strategic conversations. While much of the platform’s use remains internal, there’s significant potential to share insights externally, particularly with business improvement areas and tourism operators.

The results

Empowering agility, improving collaboration, and unlocking opportunities

D / AI Destinations didn’t just meet Explore Edmonton’s needs—it helped them move from basic volume tracking to a more insightful, value-focused approach, giving them a level of agility and clarity they didn’t have before.

Since adopting the platform, they are now able to:

• Respond faster to internal requests and ad hoc questions
• Support executive reporting with current, contextual insights
• Track seasonality to assess whether visits are spreading more evenly throughout the year
• Plan based on real-time flight demand and booking windows
• Monitor sentiment shifts by market, traveller type, and city zone
• Add context to popularity data by layering in sentiment and behavioural signals
• Bring teams into alignment and improving collaboration
• Identify opportunities and challenges at the neighbourhood and POI level