This study is embedded in the research field of smart tourism destinations and examined how Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) – the central governing bodies of touristic destinations – can evolve their business model by applying Business Intelligence (BI) techniques to support stakeholders of the destination, enabling these to improve their decision-making.

Design Science Research methodology was used to investigate the topic. A five-step BI-as-a-service (BIaaS) cycle was developed as an artifact, showcasing a process for DMOs to offer data-based services to the destination stakeholders and thus improve their decision-making. The five steps are: (1) Define stakeholder requirements. (2) Review available data and collect data sets. (3) Analyse and visualize data. (4) Act on insights. (5) Scale and improve. The most important tasks for each of these steps are highlighted. Overarching, two principal prerequisites for a successful implementation of the proposed BIaaS process could be determined: “Build BI know-how” and “foster a data-sharing culture”. Additionally, the study prototypically instantiated the proposed process and showed examples of data-based services.

The following limitations should be considered. The artifact originated in Zürich, Switzerland, and its generalizability beyond this destination requires further validation through real-world applications. Furthermore, the study does not cover the details of BI like data warehousing or Extract-Load-Transform processes, which pose challenges when scaling beyond the study's prototype. Legal aspects and data protection implications were not addressed either.