The University of Cambridge, one of the best addresses worldwide for scientific research, has decided to rely on hotel data „Made in Germany“ for a new global tourism study.

The study focuses on the enumeration of ecosystem services in coastal regions. Special attention will be put on coral reefs, e.g. in the Maldives. The aim is to capture as precisely as possible the burden of coastal ecosystems.

Dr. Mark Spalding, lecturing at Cambridge University, will lead the study and is co-leading TNC’s (The Nature Conservancy, www.tnc.org) new Mapping Ocean Wealth initiative. The marine scientist has already given proof of his competence by numerous publications, as for example the World Atlas of Coral Reefs in 2001 and the World Atlas of Mangroves in 2010.

According to Dr. Spalding the core resource needed for TNC’s Mapping Ocean Wealth initiative is a global hotel database that reliably covers the worldwide hotel industry in total. German data specialist DELTA CHECK was the only data provider to meet all requirements with its „Global Accommodation Reference Database“ GARD.

Pivotal requirement was a market coverage coming as close as possible to the 100% mark, a discipline in which DELTA CHECK’s reference hotel database is the unchallenged market leader since meanwhile 3 decades:
The latest version of the “Global Accommodation Reference Database” lists more than 1 million hotel properties in all 254 countries and territories worldwide. Each property is mapped exactly with up to 300 details.

In a recent conversation with the press Ahmed El-Masry, member of the management at DELTA CHECK, commented on the British elite university’s decision in a smart way: „Cambridge’s clear choice represents a significant and valuable decision guidance for buyers of hotel data.“

Dr. Mark Spalding
http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-mark-spalding

Dr. Mark Spalding, Publications:
http://blog.nature.org/science/author/mspalding/