The new platform provides up-to-date status information on tourism and events in Helsinki

Helsinki aims to be a smart destination and functional city for events. The launch of DataLokki achieves these goals by providing open and up-to-date data, such as Helsinki’s tourism and events key figures, registered overnight stays, number of events, cruises, and air traffic.

The DataLokki platform helps to update tourism and event information, making it easier to find. It also allows for a better real-time situational overview. Another major benefit is that previously fee-based data will become more widely available to tourism and event operators. In its initial phase, DataLokki contains 47 data windows and 420 data visualisations. The data of the platform are collected from more than 40 data sources, including both public and commercial data.

“DataLokki provides centralised, accessible, cumulative, and comparable data for tourism and event operators. The goal of the platform is to improve decision-making in the tourism and event industries so that decisions can be based on up-to-date information,” says Nina Vesterinen, tourism director at the City of Helsinki.  

Tourism already uses a wide range of data sources, but the tourism and events ecosystem data have been fragmented across different systems. There is also a lack of consistent practices for collecting, sharing and using data. However, knowledge management is vital for success in international competition. In the age of artificial intelligence, it is important to be able to download reliable data in a structured format and use it to create new data. 

You can find DataLokki at hel.fi/datalokki. It is intended for use by the tourism and events industry in Helsinki. The pilot view is open to everyone and does not require logging in. However, members of the Helsinki tourism and events network, Makers of Helsinki, will additionally have access to more detailed information. Custom views for businesses have been designed with the business network to meet their needs. The City of Helsinki has developed DataLokki in cooperation with Tridea Oy, and the BisLenz platform was used in its development.

DataLokki provides tangible benefits to companies in the tourism and event industries

DataLokki makes it possible to develop knowledge-based management in the City of Helsinki and the tourism industry. Instead of looking at reports from the past, Helsinki can focus on analysing real-time and predictive data, sharing interpretations and planning and optimising operations. However, simply having data does not make it valuable; what matters is how it is processed and applied in practice.

“DataLokki brings concrete benefits to tourism and event companies by providing insights into their business operations and competitive situations. It helps to make informed decisions and enables growth, modernisation and the improvement of skills, product development and business operations,” says Henna Siltanen, senior advisor at the City of Helsinki. 

“I am very happy with DataLokki. Our goal is a constant drive to develop knowledge management. This is why we need to constantly monitor the data and use them to identify areas to develop. As Helsinki-based operators, when we discuss what to do and how to develop operations, it is extremely important that we are all viewing the same screen and moving forward together,” says DataLokki user Tuomo Laaksonen, director of corporate sales at Scandic Hotels. 

What does DataLokki 2.0 look like? 

DataLokki will continue to be developed based on feedback from users. Plans for further development include increasing data on how tourists spend their money, innovative data integration, applying artificial intelligence, and creating models that predict potential futures. In addition, Finnish and Swedish translations will be added to the public view that is currently in English. 

“We will invest heavily in developing DataLokki. At this stage, we need a lot of user feedback in order to prioritise platform development according to the needs of operators in the tourism and event industry. We invite all tourism and event industry operators to use DataLokki and take control of Helsinki’s tourism and events data,” says tourism director Nina Vesterinen.