Good practice:

Visitor traffic monitor

Tourism Veluwe Arnhem Nijmegen developed a visitor traffic monitor with support from the Province of Gelderland for the summer of 2020. This tool monitors visitor streams and spreads them across the province in order to provide safe recreation spaces in the times of Covid-19.

Local experts in the field indicate several times a day whether it is crowded, a bit crowded or not crowded at all. By offering alternatives to crowded places, we spread visitors over the province. In this way we contribute to safe recreation in times of the coronavirus.

The focus is on places where a lot of daytime recreation takes place. The guiding principle in determining the pressure is the extent to which experts estimate that the 1.5 meter economy is guaranteed. With the efforts of hundreds of experts, we have sufficient coverage for the whole province of Gelderland.

• The heat map is made accessible directly via the websites of the regional marketing organizations and local newspapers. On the channels of the regional marketing organizations, we also provide alternatives for the too busy (= red) places.
• The heat map is also made available via a widget, so that recreation entrepreneurs, museums, municipalities, accommodations, etc. can place it on their websites.
• With this information, visitors to and residents of Gelderland can determine their travel plans.
• Research into further automation (replacing expert measurements with available (big) data sources) is taking place.

Development of the platform € 15.000
Communication € 3000

Human resources
Approximately 1.600 hours. For communication, connecting local experts, instructions and meetings

- More than 475.238 monitored visitors
- Listed as widget on more than 150 websites
- 407 locations
- Most visits were recorded on 31 July (29.152)
- About 100 publications in (online) newspapers and magazine (reaching out to approx. 3 million people)
- Appeared in 8 national radio and television programmes (reaching out to approx. 5 million people)
- 650.000 social media impressions and 25.000 clicks (6.75% click through rate)

This heritage monitor is a very interesting practice that we believe all regions in Europe can learn from in the COVID-19 context. It is a powerful tool for authorities at local, regional and national level, but also for (tourism) entrepreneurs to ensure a safe visit to tourists in a pandemic context, especially during the busy summer of 2020.