Identification of Distorted Official Hospitality Statistics’ and Their Impact on DMOs’ Funding’s Sustainability: Case Notes from Slovakia

Abstract

Analyzing the usability of open machine-readable registries in the context of minimizing gaps for local occupancy tax evasions in the example of Slovakia is the main purpose of this paper. The concept uses the Registry of Financial Statements’ and Registry of Legal Entities’ application programming interfaces (APIs) for extracting public data on companies’ and entrepreneurs’ business nature, in accordance with Eurostat’s Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) and United Nations’ International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC) at the level of entities’ registered address. The resulted data sets are compared with open official data that is available at the municipality level (LAU2), as gathered by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic’s monthly surveys and municipalities’ annual accounts. The comparison’s outcomes indicate the deviations between the official and the possible numbers of entities with occupancy tax obligations, as well as tax revenues. The results conclude with how the incorporation of used open APIs in official processes may be beneficial for public and state institutions in the matter of potential local tax evasions, as well as for state regulated public-private partnership destination management organizations. The notes also discuss solutions for the minimization of data and the industry’s official impact distortion.