Tourism statistics: Proving a point

By Antony Motha

Tourism feeds a million people

Tourism does not appear in the national accounts because it is a ‘demand-side activity’. Unlike manufacturing and agriculture (both supply-side), demand-side activities are defined in terms of who consumes the product. When any industry sells to a tourist, that is ‘tourism activity’, explained UNWTO Consultant, Stan Fleetwood, in conversation with The Sunday Times FT.

“If you understate it, it’s not recognised,” Fleetwood says, justifying the purpose of Tourism Satellite Account (TSA). TSA addresses the problem by giving tourism statistics the same official recognition as supply-side activities have.

Fleetwood continues: “In Australia, before we got TSA in 2000, the Treasurer didn’t believe the figures that our consultants put together. After TSA, the Minister for Tourism could say, ‘Tourism is 4.5%... bigger than coal exports, bigger than wheat.’ The Treasurer couldn’t argue with that because it was produced by Australian Bureau of Statistics (which comes under the Treasurer)!”

“Visitor arrivals and earnings in foreign currency are only one part of the story”, elaborates Prema Cooray, Chairman of USAID’s Tourism Cluster. In the local context, Cooray says, “There is a huge informal sector in tourism - handicrafts, curios, gems & jewellery, spice gardens, batiks... Suppliers of these items live on tourism. There are 60,000 persons directly employed in the tourism sector.

“But for every direct employee, there are at least three or four indirect employees. If four, that means 300,000 people altogether. Multiply that by a family unit and you will realise that tourism feeds one million people.”

Renton de Alwis, Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourist Board, this week emphasized the need to influence governments with facts and figures on tourism and the industry.

P M Leelaratne, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, corroborated that viewpoint – during a workshop by the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) on Tourism Statistics & Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), saying, “Measurement of earnings is essential for policy makers to decide where we should invest. On what statistics should we base our decisions? Do embarkation cards, for example, capture what we really want to?”

‘Travel and tourism’ is the fastest growing industry, Christine Brew, UNWTO representative, pointed out. “UNWTO forecasts worldwide tourist arrivals at 1.1 billion during 2010.” That represents an annualized increase of 6.9% over the 842 million that was recorded during 2006. Brew spoke of the need for a comprehensive system of tourism statistics and indicated that the Colombo workshop was the second to be held this year.

Stan Fleetwood, a UNWTO Consultant, described tourism as a “fantastic phenomenon”. However, many countries struggle to generate a consistent and reliable database on international and domestic visitors’ consumption. UNWTO has dedicated sustained efforts to designing statistical instruments to help countries do their estimation.

The workshop had two primary objectives:

-Improve statistical capacity building for participating countries, and thereby make progress in measurement and analysis of economic impacts of tourism

-Initiate tasks recommended by UNWTO for development of a TSA.

|| Front Page | News | Editorial | Columns | Sports | Plus | Financial Times | International | Mirror | TV Times | Funday Times||