Reassessing transportation-related CO2 emissions of European city tourism: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the contribution of DMOs in improving the precision of CO2 estimates

This chapter has the twofold objectives of reassessing the European city tourism transportation-related CO2 emissions presented in Gunter and Wöber (2022) and highlighting the importance of management information and decision support systems for evidence-based decision making by DMOs. First, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on CO2 emissions is measured by comparing the pre (year 2019), during (year 2000), and post (year 2021) pandemic travel emissions, whereby ‘post pandemic’ should be understood as the year in which the most severe travel restrictions and other pandemic-related measures were gradually lifted. Second, as representatives of city DMOs have started entering their own data in the online management information and decision support system TourMIS (for example, modal split according to source markets, average CO2 emissions per transportation mode, average number of destinations visited) beyond the calibrated parameters and approximated modal split proposed by Gunter and Wöber (2022), a preliminary evaluation is provided on the progress of stakeholder involvement in developing the learning methodology.