Visit Sweden's National API: Transforming Destination Marketing Through Structured Open Data
Visit Sweden has launched a national tourism API uniting 14,000 businesses under shared data standards, boosting visibility, AI readiness and innovation through open, structured, and collaborative data.
Tourism has always been an information-intensive industry, but recent digital advancements have amplified this reality tenfold. A potential visitor planning a trip to virtually any destination today navigates a labyrinth of disconnected platforms: official tourism websites, Google searches, TripAdvisor reviews, booking engines, social media, AI chatbots and countless niche apps promising the "perfect" itinerary. Each platform holds fragments of the story, yet none can paint the complete picture.
This fragmentation fundamentally undermines how destinations compete for attention. When information exists in silos across regional DMOs, private booking systems and individual business websites, several critical problems emerge. Search engines struggle to surface relevant results because data lacks a consistent structure. AI systems, which increasingly mediate travel decisions, cannot accurately interpret or recommend experiences they cannot properly ‘read’. Smaller operators remain invisible not because their products lack appeal, but because they lack the technical capability to appear where decisions are made.
The tourism sector has partially addressed one dimension of this problem through Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. Sharing high-quality imagery across platforms has become relatively straightforward, with destinations maintaining libraries of photographs that journalists and travel bloggers can access freely. Yet DAM systems solve only the visual component of discoverability. A stunning photograph of a Swedish archipelago might capture attention, but without structured, machine-readable data attached, potential visitors hit a wall when they ask the next logical question: "How do I actually get there, where can I stay nearby, what does it cost and what else can I do in the area?”
This is where API-based structured data diverges fundamentally from traditional content sharing. Whilst DAM systems distribute isolated assets, APIs maintain the connections and context that make information truly useful. An API doesn't just share that a hotel exists; it communicates its precise location, amenities, pricing structures and availability in a format that can be easily interpreted to answer complex questions. This aligns with the increasing need for enhanced data contextualisation to ensure accurate and well-informed results.
Rather than continuing to operate within this fragmented reality, Visit Sweden has taken an approach that few destinations have attempted. This entailed extensive work to build a comprehensive national API that consolidates tourism information from across the entire country into a single, openly accessible format. Launched in September 2025 with approximately 14,000 hotels and experiences, the initiative represents both a technical achievement and a strategic bet on how travel decisions will be made in an AI-mediated future.
The national API functions as something between a digital marketplace and a knowledge graph. It aggregates tourism data from across Sweden into a single, queryable repository that anyone can access without licensing fees. This technical infrastructure, however complex, represents only part of the challenge. Getting an entire nation's tourism sector to align around shared data standards and collaborative governance requires a different kind of innovation altogether.
Enabling a Collaborative Framework
At the national level, Visit Sweden coordinates with major industry players, including Scandic Hotels, Best Western Hotels & Resorts and the Swedish Tourist Association, who have integrated their systems to automatically export data to the national API. This automation proves crucial. Rather than requiring manual data entry, the system 'harvests' information directly from existing databases, minimising the administrative burden that might otherwise discourage participation. Regional DMOs also serve as critical intermediaries in this ecosystem. 19 of the country's 21 regions are actively involved in providing the contextualised support that ensures national ambitions translate into local action.
With small tourism businesses often lacking dedicated IT staff, the contribution of the regional DMOs proves essential to ensuring SMEs have the opportunity to enhance their digital visibility. A centrally-mandated technical standard, no matter how well designed, can fail simply because implementing it requires expertise that small businesses don't possess and can't afford to acquire. The solution takes the form of EntryScape, a platform integrated within the national API ecosystem that enables businesses without existing database systems to manage their information freely through a user-friendly interface. Each participating DMO maintains contact points who can guide businesses through the integration process, addressing concerns about data ownership and explaining technical requirements in an accessible language.
This distributed governance model meaningfully democratises access. An independent tour operator or small guesthouse can participate on an equal footing with multinational chains. This can all be achieved without them needing to understand semantic web vocabularies or API protocols. The zero-cost model also removes economic barriers that might otherwise create a two-tier system. For Sweden's tourism sector, this API-enabled infrastructure addresses the visibility problem that has long disadvantaged smaller operators. A family-run mountain lodge can now appear in the same AI-generated recommendations and search results as international hotel chains, competing on the quality of their offer rather than the size of their marketing budgets.
The collaborative framework addresses data ownership directly, a point of friction in many data-sharing initiatives. This model inverts the traditional publishing approach where businesses maintain parallel presences across dozens of platforms, manually updating information in each location and inevitably creating inconsistencies. Instead, the API creates a single authoritative source that businesses control, whilst platforms pull current data as needed. With businesses retaining full ownership of their data, this eliminates the traditional trade-off between broad distribution and data control, where businesses historically had to choose between maintaining tight ownership of their information or distributing it widely to reach travellers.
Building on Schema.org Standards
The most consequential decision Visit Sweden made was the choice to build the entire API using schema.org standards. This might seem like an obscure technical detail, but it carries profound strategic implications. Schema.org provides a shared language that helps search engines understand web content without requiring custom integrations. With the use of schema.org vocabulary, every major search engine and AI system can immediately interpret the text that is written.
The alternative, which many destinations have pursued, involves creating proprietary data structures that work efficiently within their own systems but require custom development work for external platforms that want to access the information. This approach inevitably limits distribution and creates ongoing integration costs.
By adopting the same standard that powers Google's rich search results and AI assistants' travel recommendations, Visit Sweden ensures the country's competitiveness and digital presence are strengthened. When a traveller searches for sustainable accommodation options near Swedish national parks, the API's structured data can be accessed and reviewed to provide accurate, contextual answers. This is achieved precisely because the underlying vocabulary used by the API matches the training of established platforms.
This standardisation also has broad future-proofing implications for enabling long-term success. As new digital platforms emerge, they're likely to support schema.org by default. Swedish tourism businesses will gain a presence on these platforms automatically, without any additional integration work, simply because the foundational data structure aligns with internationally accepted expectations.
When potential visitors encounter consistent, structured information about Swedish destinations across multiple platforms, all ultimately derived from the same authoritative source, confidence increases. This consistency extends to practical details like opening hours, contact information, accessibility features and seasonal availability - precisely the kind of information where discrepancies can significantly impact visitor experience and damage trust.
The national API's value extends well beyond streamlining the digital presence of Sweden's tourism sector. With visitors increasingly turning to AI-powered travel planning tools, these systems require large, structured datasets to identify patterns, understand preferences and generate intelligent recommendations. The national API provides exactly this foundation. By making comprehensive, structured tourism data freely available through a standards-based interface, the initiative establishes the groundwork for innovations that would be impossible within a fragmented data environment. This is where the strategic vision becomes most apparent.
Previously, entrepreneurs wanting to build Sweden-focused travel services faced a chicken-and-egg problem. Gathering the comprehensive data required substantial resources, but without demonstrated market traction, securing those resources proved difficult. By providing rich, structured data freely, the national API removes this barrier. The API's design also explicitly anticipates integration with complementary data sources, recognising that tourism experiences don't exist in isolation but within broader contexts. This will catalyse a wave of experimentation from independent developers and startups exploring smart travel guides and planning tools for personalised recommendations, helping to develop new solutions that truly understand the full scope of Swedish tourism.
The collaborative model creates network effects that should compound over time. As more businesses join, the dataset becomes more comprehensive, making services built atop the API more valuable, which encourages further adoption and development. This virtuous cycle could position Sweden's tourism ecosystem for sustained competitive advantage.
DTTT Take
Aligning with EU and Swedish data strategies that prioritise making public sector information accessible as open data, tourism emerges as a priority sector. By implementing the API, Visit Sweden demonstrates practical execution of these strategic priorities, moving from policy objectives to an operational tool. The standardised API infrastructure positions Sweden favourably for the ongoing shift towards AI-mediated travel decisions.
Several uncertainties remain. Will the promised network effects materialise quickly enough to maintain stakeholder enthusiasm? Can quality control mechanisms scale as participation grows? Will the platform attract the developer ecosystem necessary to realise its innovation potential? However, what is clear is that now is the moment to take bold action to adjust to changing visitor search preferences and evolving search algorithms.
As large language models and conversational interfaces increasingly serve as the first point of contact between travellers and destinations, the ability of these systems to accurately understand and recommend Swedish destinations becomes strategically critical. The most immediate impact centres on discoverability. Improved visibility in search engines and booking platforms should drive increased visitor numbers and spending, though quantifying this effect will require time as the system matures and adoption deepens.
The fragmentation problem that plagues modern destination marketing won't disappear simply because better solutions exist. Entrenched interests, technical debt, coordination challenges and simple inertia all favour the status quo. What Visit Sweden's approach demonstrates is that comprehensive solutions remain possible when strategic vision aligns with collaborative governance and technical abilities. Whether other destinations can replicate this combination remains an open question, but at a minimum, Visit Sweden has provided a compelling proof of concept for what modern destination data infrastructure can achieve when ambition matches execution.
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Tourism has always been an information-intensive industry, but recent digital advancements have amplified this reality tenfold. A potential visitor planning a trip to virtually any destination today navigates a labyrinth of disconnected platforms: official tourism websites, Google searches, TripAdvisor reviews, booking engines, social media, AI chatbots and countless niche apps promising the "perfect" itinerary. Each platform holds fragments of the story, yet none can paint the complete picture.
This fragmentation fundamentally undermines how destinations compete for attention. When information exists in silos across regional DMOs, private booking systems and individual business websites, several critical problems emerge. Search engines struggle to surface relevant results because data lacks a consistent structure. AI systems, which increasingly mediate travel decisions, cannot accurately interpret or recommend experiences they cannot properly ‘read’. Smaller operators remain invisible not because their products lack appeal, but because they lack the technical capability to appear where decisions are made.
The tourism sector has partially addressed one dimension of this problem through Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. Sharing high-quality imagery across platforms has become relatively straightforward, with destinations maintaining libraries of photographs that journalists and travel bloggers can access freely. Yet DAM systems solve only the visual component of discoverability. A stunning photograph of a Swedish archipelago might capture attention, but without structured, machine-readable data attached, potential visitors hit a wall when they ask the next logical question: "How do I actually get there, where can I stay nearby, what does it cost and what else can I do in the area?”
This is where API-based structured data diverges fundamentally from traditional content sharing. Whilst DAM systems distribute isolated assets, APIs maintain the connections and context that make information truly useful. An API doesn't just share that a hotel exists; it communicates its precise location, amenities, pricing structures and availability in a format that can be easily interpreted to answer complex questions. This aligns with the increasing need for enhanced data contextualisation to ensure accurate and well-informed results.
Rather than continuing to operate within this fragmented reality, Visit Sweden has taken an approach that few destinations have attempted. This entailed extensive work to build a comprehensive national API that consolidates tourism information from across the entire country into a single, openly accessible format. Launched in September 2025 with approximately 14,000 hotels and experiences, the initiative represents both a technical achievement and a strategic bet on how travel decisions will be made in an AI-mediated future.
The national API functions as something between a digital marketplace and a knowledge graph. It aggregates tourism data from across Sweden into a single, queryable repository that anyone can access without licensing fees. This technical infrastructure, however complex, represents only part of the challenge. Getting an entire nation's tourism sector to align around shared data standards and collaborative governance requires a different kind of innovation altogether.
Enabling a Collaborative Framework
At the national level, Visit Sweden coordinates with major industry players, including Scandic Hotels, Best Western Hotels & Resorts and the Swedish Tourist Association, who have integrated their systems to automatically export data to the national API. This automation proves crucial. Rather than requiring manual data entry, the system 'harvests' information directly from existing databases, minimising the administrative burden that might otherwise discourage participation. Regional DMOs also serve as critical intermediaries in this ecosystem. 19 of the country's 21 regions are actively involved in providing the contextualised support that ensures national ambitions translate into local action.
With small tourism businesses often lacking dedicated IT staff, the contribution of the regional DMOs proves essential to ensuring SMEs have the opportunity to enhance their digital visibility. A centrally-mandated technical standard, no matter how well designed, can fail simply because implementing it requires expertise that small businesses don't possess and can't afford to acquire. The solution takes the form of EntryScape, a platform integrated within the national API ecosystem that enables businesses without existing database systems to manage their information freely through a user-friendly interface. Each participating DMO maintains contact points who can guide businesses through the integration process, addressing concerns about data ownership and explaining technical requirements in an accessible language.
This distributed governance model meaningfully democratises access. An independent tour operator or small guesthouse can participate on an equal footing with multinational chains. This can all be achieved without them needing to understand semantic web vocabularies or API protocols. The zero-cost model also removes economic barriers that might otherwise create a two-tier system. For Sweden's tourism sector, this API-enabled infrastructure addresses the visibility problem that has long disadvantaged smaller operators. A family-run mountain lodge can now appear in the same AI-generated recommendations and search results as international hotel chains, competing on the quality of their offer rather than the size of their marketing budgets.
The collaborative framework addresses data ownership directly, a point of friction in many data-sharing initiatives. This model inverts the traditional publishing approach where businesses maintain parallel presences across dozens of platforms, manually updating information in each location and inevitably creating inconsistencies. Instead, the API creates a single authoritative source that businesses control, whilst platforms pull current data as needed. With businesses retaining full ownership of their data, this eliminates the traditional trade-off between broad distribution and data control, where businesses historically had to choose between maintaining tight ownership of their information or distributing it widely to reach travellers.
Building on Schema.org Standards
The most consequential decision Visit Sweden made was the choice to build the entire API using schema.org standards. This might seem like an obscure technical detail, but it carries profound strategic implications. Schema.org provides a shared language that helps search engines understand web content without requiring custom integrations. With the use of schema.org vocabulary, every major search engine and AI system can immediately interpret the text that is written.
The alternative, which many destinations have pursued, involves creating proprietary data structures that work efficiently within their own systems but require custom development work for external platforms that want to access the information. This approach inevitably limits distribution and creates ongoing integration costs.
By adopting the same standard that powers Google's rich search results and AI assistants' travel recommendations, Visit Sweden ensures the country's competitiveness and digital presence are strengthened. When a traveller searches for sustainable accommodation options near Swedish national parks, the API's structured data can be accessed and reviewed to provide accurate, contextual answers. This is achieved precisely because the underlying vocabulary used by the API matches the training of established platforms.
This standardisation also has broad future-proofing implications for enabling long-term success. As new digital platforms emerge, they're likely to support schema.org by default. Swedish tourism businesses will gain a presence on these platforms automatically, without any additional integration work, simply because the foundational data structure aligns with internationally accepted expectations.
When potential visitors encounter consistent, structured information about Swedish destinations across multiple platforms, all ultimately derived from the same authoritative source, confidence increases. This consistency extends to practical details like opening hours, contact information, accessibility features and seasonal availability - precisely the kind of information where discrepancies can significantly impact visitor experience and damage trust.
The national API's value extends well beyond streamlining the digital presence of Sweden's tourism sector. With visitors increasingly turning to AI-powered travel planning tools, these systems require large, structured datasets to identify patterns, understand preferences and generate intelligent recommendations. The national API provides exactly this foundation. By making comprehensive, structured tourism data freely available through a standards-based interface, the initiative establishes the groundwork for innovations that would be impossible within a fragmented data environment. This is where the strategic vision becomes most apparent.
Previously, entrepreneurs wanting to build Sweden-focused travel services faced a chicken-and-egg problem. Gathering the comprehensive data required substantial resources, but without demonstrated market traction, securing those resources proved difficult. By providing rich, structured data freely, the national API removes this barrier. The API's design also explicitly anticipates integration with complementary data sources, recognising that tourism experiences don't exist in isolation but within broader contexts. This will catalyse a wave of experimentation from independent developers and startups exploring smart travel guides and planning tools for personalised recommendations, helping to develop new solutions that truly understand the full scope of Swedish tourism.
The collaborative model creates network effects that should compound over time. As more businesses join, the dataset becomes more comprehensive, making services built atop the API more valuable, which encourages further adoption and development. This virtuous cycle could position Sweden's tourism ecosystem for sustained competitive advantage.
DTTT Take
Aligning with EU and Swedish data strategies that prioritise making public sector information accessible as open data, tourism emerges as a priority sector. By implementing the API, Visit Sweden demonstrates practical execution of these strategic priorities, moving from policy objectives to an operational tool. The standardised API infrastructure positions Sweden favourably for the ongoing shift towards AI-mediated travel decisions.
Several uncertainties remain. Will the promised network effects materialise quickly enough to maintain stakeholder enthusiasm? Can quality control mechanisms scale as participation grows? Will the platform attract the developer ecosystem necessary to realise its innovation potential? However, what is clear is that now is the moment to take bold action to adjust to changing visitor search preferences and evolving search algorithms.
As large language models and conversational interfaces increasingly serve as the first point of contact between travellers and destinations, the ability of these systems to accurately understand and recommend Swedish destinations becomes strategically critical. The most immediate impact centres on discoverability. Improved visibility in search engines and booking platforms should drive increased visitor numbers and spending, though quantifying this effect will require time as the system matures and adoption deepens.
The fragmentation problem that plagues modern destination marketing won't disappear simply because better solutions exist. Entrenched interests, technical debt, coordination challenges and simple inertia all favour the status quo. What Visit Sweden's approach demonstrates is that comprehensive solutions remain possible when strategic vision aligns with collaborative governance and technical abilities. Whether other destinations can replicate this combination remains an open question, but at a minimum, Visit Sweden has provided a compelling proof of concept for what modern destination data infrastructure can achieve when ambition matches execution.
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