Management Information System for Tourism

Management Information System for Tourism - MIST

The Management Information System for Tourism (MIST) is piloted by the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO). MIST was conceived to:

	Improve the ability of the Caribbean destinations to manage and develop a sustainable tourism industry,
	Enhance their ability to respond to the changing market environment in which they now operate, and
	Strengthen information infrastructure and enhance their management capability.

The MIST was structured to serve both as a national and regional integrated Management Information System. It comprises three main components:

	Performance - Database of arrival / departure statistics, annual economic indicators, etc.
	Product Inventory - Database of tourism facilities - accommodation, cruise, carriers, attractions, etc., and destination information.
	Marketing - Database of source market information and marketing intelligence.

The system has been designed to meet a number of objectives, among them to act as a repository of tourism information, and as a planning, research, and development tool. As an example of the latter, MIST allows to link arrival and survey information with inventory information to predict load factors and occupancy and to predict broad visitor expenditure levels.

Initially, it is expected that the MIST users will collect and input information that is relevant to them - and later it is planned for CTO to provide some source market information to all MIST users as a prelude to encouraging the sharing of non-competitive and non-confidential information amongst MIST users.

Potential for use as a decision-support system for sustainable development

As it currently stands, MIST is geared towards incorporating mainly economic data for the tourism sector, with some social elements, allowing member countries to monitor arrivals from immigration e/cards. It does not have an environmental component, and does not have the capacity for sharing information between countries, rather, it has been implemented individually in each of sixteen Caribbean countries. However, MIST is a system designed to be used on either "stand alone" PC's or on a network comprising the internet and intranet, through which, in the future, information and information management and maintenance will become available on line.

For MIST to function as a decision-support system for sustainable tourism, it will be necessary to develop it further so that environmental and other socioeconomic data can be incorporated, and to develop a capacity for calculating the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of tourism developments. Currently, MIST is designed to become a comprehensive destination management system. Ideally, MIST would allow for developing scenarios on the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of planning for tourism facilities at determined locations.

NOTE: Based on initial information made available by the CTO. To be updated as more information becomes available.

Also see presentation by Gail Clarke, CTO, at the IDSD Training Workshop, October 27-31st, 2003.

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