A1-Mobility Data Analysis: Visitor Flow and Roaming Data for the Estimation of Retail Sales, Private Consumption and Tourist Overnight Stays

In this project, mobile phone mobility data and sales data from cash-less transactions are used to provide early estimates for selected economic activities. The intention is to produce flash estimate for retail sales, private consumption and foreign tourist overnight stays as early as every Monday for the week just ended. Statistics Austria publishes preliminary monthly data for retail sales and overnight stays with a lag of at least one month; final values are not available until two months after the end of a month. For this analysis, weekly data on cashless sales at point-of-sale locations of a payment system provider are used. These payment data are provided for sales made in stationary or online stores, domestic or abroad, and are subdivided into 30 demand categories. In addition, two anonymised and summarised data sets of A1-mobile phone customers prepared by Ivenium Data Insights are evaluated: first, daily visitor flow data in ten selected inner-city shopping streets. Together with the cash-less transactions data, they are used for retail sales and private consumption nowcasts. Second, daily roaming information from foreign mobile customers using the A1 network during a stay in Austria for at least one full day, is available disaggregated by country of origin and province of stay. This information is used for the nowcasting of foreign overnight stays. This collection includes all 19 "Monday Briefings" prepared for the Federal Ministry of Finance during the period 12 February 2021 through 16 July 2021.