Tourism organisations are using data gathered by tracking cellphones to monitor crowd behaviour and other statistics.

The Venture Taranaki Trust (VTT), Taranaki's economic development agency, is one of 14 regional tourism organisations around the country that has begun using Qrious, a Spark-run compay that can track the position of a cellphone using cell towers, before it collates the data and sells it on.

The organisations have been using the software on a trial basis since July 1.

ANDY JACKSON/Fairfax NZ Venture Taranaki CEO Stuart Trundle said the organisation is using information gathered by tracking cellphones, but isn't able to track individuals.

Spark communications partner Sam Durbin said Qrious - which was started in 2014 by what was then know as Telecom, as a "standalone" business - was a huge help for organisations looking for data.

"Qrious Voyager pulls together data from a range of sources, including publicly available data sets like the Census, and combines it with anonymised and aggregated network information from Spark's mobile network.

"The insights help them [operators] to tailor and optimise their marketing spends, identify areas that are working well and getting lots of visitors as well as others that might need a bit of a boost.

ANDY JACKSON/FAIRFAX NZ The information from the phones will be collated together with the retail spending through eftpos, debit and credit cards to give an overall picture of spending in the Taranaki region.

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While presenting at the Stratford District Council meeting on Tuesday VTT chief executive Stuart Trundle joked and said: "we will actually be able to track your mobile phone as you move up and down the aisles of the super market."

"It's getting quite scary the level of detail we'll be able to bring you," he said.

ANDY JACKSON/Fairfax NZ The Venture Taranaki Trust has been using the data since July 1.

However, on Wednesday Trundle said VTT would only get the aggregate data and were not able to track individual people.

"It doesn't aggregate down to an individual level but it does allow us when we have a major event to link that additional spend while those events are on," he said.

"It's basically a mix of taking the data from your mobile phone and linking into the cellphone tower and then linking that in with the retail data sets from spend on both eftpos, debit and credit cards."

Trundle said he couldn't comment on the privacy implications of using data gathered from mobile phones and said it was up to Spark to ensure there were no legal implications.

However, Durbin said the Qrious tourism product, didn't provide any insights into the location of people within the region, and was not able to see exact location information about a specific device or customer.

"We take our customers' security and privacy extremely seriously, and we take steps to anonymise and aggregate the network information that Qrious uses to create their insight."

The information gathered would be compared to the 75 per cent of retail spending data VTT already has access to through BNZ and Paymark.

​It currently collates and releases the data in annual and quarterly reports, broken down by the three districts in Taranaki.

That information is provided to business and other organisations to help them identify trends and plan for future business growth.

The data would also allow VTT to keep track of visitors who stay with friends and relatives, which accounts for nearly twice as many tourists as those who stay in a hotel or motel.

Trundle said VTT used to conduct a monthly phone survey to gather the information about the visitors, but would now be able to use the cellphone data to collect that information.

However, communications manager Antony Rhodes said he wasn't sure how that aspect of the data was gathered and if it tracked where each individual spent the night.

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