Most of what the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) changes in a year never reaches a Visitor. This year, four changes do. Each one alters a field your website reads, and each is easy to miss, because ATDW announces them where developers look and destination marketers mostly don’t: the release notes of its ATLAS API.

Here is what changed in 2026, what it does to the Products on your site, and what to check before summer.

EV Aware and EV Ready

On 26 August 2026, ATDW introduced two new accreditation attributes, “EV Aware” and “EV Ready”, available on every profile category except Journey (ATDW release notes, Patch 110⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

For a destination site this is the first structured way to say which stays, wineries and attractions cater for electric vehicles, instead of hoping an Operator mentions a charger in their description. It is useful wherever a Visitor plans a drive: accommodation filters, touring itineraries and the getting-here page.

Victoria’s Heartland already lists EV charging stations town by town on its Getting Here & Around page, including Evie and Tesla Destination Chargers (see the Victoria’s Heartland case study). An attribute on the Operator’s own profile lets a site take the next step and show it on the Product.

What to check: whether your site maps accreditation attributes it hasn’t seen before, or drops them. Then decide where EV status should appear: a filter, a badge on the Product page, or both. Expect a slow start. An attribute only appears once Operators add it to their profiles, so a filter launched in October may return two results.

Accessibility accreditation on profiles

In June, ATDW and The Accessible Group announced that ATDW will recognise the Accessible Tourism Accreditation Program (ATAP) on participating profiles. It will happen in phases, starting with accreditation recognition and links from those profiles to verified accessibility profiles (The Accessible Group, 11 June 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)). ATAP has four levels: Assisted Walking, Independent Wheelchair, Assisted Wheelchair and Sensory Assisted.

ATDW’s Nadia Feeney framed the partnership as distributing “reliable, AI ready accessibility information”. A verified level is a fact an assistant can repeat with confidence; a sentence in a description saying a venue is “accessible” is not.

What to check: whether your Product pages render accessibility details at all, and whether a link to a verified profile would survive your templates. We cover what to do with this data in Showing accessibility details on destination websites.

A sustainability badge retired

On 30 September 2026, ATDW retired the “Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard by Ecotourism Australia” attribute, and the Job Vacancy feature with it (ATDW release notes, Patch 111⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

If your site shows that scorecard as a badge, or offers it as a filter for sustainable stays, the badge will quietly disappear from Products as the change flows through, and the filter will return nothing. Nobody will tell you, and a Visitor who clicks “sustainable” and gets an empty page will leave.

What to check: search your templates and filter settings for the scorecard and remove it. If sustainability is part of your positioning, base the filter on certifications that remain current, and say on the page which ones you count.

Green claims need evidence

The fourth change is guidance. On 3 August, ATDW published advice on the European Union’s Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, which applies from 27 September 2026 to any business making environmental claims to consumers in EU countries, wherever that business is based (ATDW, August 2026⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

ATDW asks Operators to check three fields, the Product Description, image captions and alt text, and to replace terms such as “eco-friendly”, “green” and “sustainable” with a specific, measurable statement, or remove them if they can’t back them up yet.

Two things follow for a destination website. Operator descriptions on your site will change over the coming months as Operators edit them, which is a good thing. And your own pages are not exempt: a campaign page that calls your region “sustainable” with nothing behind it now reads differently to a careful European visitor.

The one that hasn’t happened yet

ATDW is planning a new platform. A recruitment brief for its chief executive, published this year, describes “delivering the NextGen platform and transitioning from the current platform over the next 12 to 18 months” under a Path to 2030 strategy (Luminary Partners⁠ (opens in a new tab)). ATDW has published no dates, specifications or migration plan for distributors, and its release notes still show the current ATLAS API being patched month by month.

A new platform at the source is the change most likely to break something on a destination site, so it belongs in your planning now, even without dates. Ask whoever runs your site three questions: who will map the new data to your site when it arrives, what it will cost you, and how your site will behave if the feed stops for a day during the switch.

What hasn’t changed

Some rules are worth restating because they catch teams every year. Each state runs its own checks, so ask your state tourism organisation for yours. In NSW, for example, an ATDW profile that is not updated at least once every 12 months expires and is removed from websites, and the service is free for the business (Destination NSW⁠ (opens in a new tab)). An Operator who drops off your site in the quiet of winter has usually let their profile lapse.

On Roam

Roam syncs 40,000+ ATDW Products automatically, with descriptions, imagery, opening hours, accessibility details, booking links, Rooms and Tours, and category mapping to your site’s own structure. The sync runs on a schedule, so your site stays up even if ATDW doesn’t. When ATDW adds or retires a field, the mapping is updated in the platform, so every Roam site gets it. See how ATDW sync works on Roam.

A five-minute checklist

  1. Does your site display ATDW accreditations, and will it show EV Aware and EV Ready?
  2. Does any template or filter still reference the Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard?
  3. Do your Product pages show accessibility details, and could they link to a verified profile?
  4. Have you read your own campaign pages for unsupported “green” language?
  5. Has whoever runs your site told you, in writing, how they will handle ATDW’s next platform?