1. 11th Global Forum on Tourism Statistics:
Observations and Conclusions
Reykjavik, Iceland
14-16 November 2012

2. Evolution of the Global Forum Debate
• The debate continues on:
– how to bring recognition and confidence to
tourism through increased awareness;
– how to generate usable, practical information
and reliable and credible tools for different
stakeholders; and
– the role and credibility of the sector: how to
communicate.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

3. Evolution of Debate Cont.
• Link between statistical issues and political agenda
growing, including:
– focus on what is relevant for political agenda, and how
statistics and economic analysis can be used;
– rich and informed vision of the “tourism system”;
– effects of “external shocks”, including changes in other
sectors;
– the importance of marketing campaigns and measuring
the effects of policies;
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

4. Evolution of Debate Cont.
• Improved approach towards established issues:
– Better understanding of tourism profile and behaviour
– Seasonality, which reinforces the the need for an
integrated approach
• Increased attention to the need for improved
instruments and methods to collect information:
– Tourism statistics in 21st century constantly evolving;
allowing and requiring changes to data collection
– Focus on providing robust and comparable data that
take into account budget constraints
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

5. Roundtable Discussion: Monitoring
Progress in Tourism - What’s next?
• Key outcomes:
– Solid evidence base and a common language for
discussion is required for effective tourism policy
making.
– Statistics necessary for transparency – how is money
spent and for what outcome?
– Need to demonstrate the importance of the sector to
government and the community to justify and secure
ongoing funding.
– A need to make quantitative data user friendly for a
wide range of stakeholders with diverging interests
and needs.
– Need to move from measurement
to informing decision-making.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

6. Session 1: Effects of External Shocks
on Tourism and Tourism Statistics
• Shocks can be direct or indirect in nature - not limited
to natural disasters;
• Events that significantly disrupt established industry
equilibrium (+vely or –vely);
• Effects not always as expected and, as such, can
represent an opportunity;
• Flexibility and adaptability to changes in the external
environment is key, however;
• A need for timely information to better understand
tourist motivation and behaviour, and to monitor
effects of the “shock/s”;
• Likely to be some trade-off between quality
of data in situations of rapid response;
• Never waste a good crisis?
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

7. Session 2: Seasonality in Tourism
• Large swings in seasonal demand an issue for many
destinations – reducing seasonality a key priority.
• Important due to impacts on tourism infrastructure
(overuse V underuse), the effects on employment
(stability V quality), and on natural resources.
• Seasonality is caused by a variety of natural (e.g.
weather/climate) and institutional factors (e.g.
Institutional holidays).
• Need to measure and understand in order to develop
counter-seasonal strategies.
• Tools such as the Gini Coefficient can be used to
measure and benchmark seasonal concentration.
• Decomposition can help to identify and
target ‘reducing’ markets and simulate
outcomes.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

8. Session 2: Cont.
• It may be argued that ‘natural’ factors influencing
seasonality are a reflection of visitor perceptions and
as such, can be influenced.
• It’s important to know your customer/market in order
to inform product development.
• Seasonality can lead to complacency, and a resultant
negative impact on innovation (e.g. in relation to
environmental management).
• Standards to measure seasonality are still required.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

9. Session 3: Tourism Statistics
in the 21st Century
• Mobile positioning data can be used to improve tourist
statistics and to monitor business use and use for other
visitors and in that way increase the quality of tourist
data.
• Mobile data complements traditional statistics allowing
the understanding of itineraries and activities of tourists.
• More methodological work on utilisation of mobile data
is needed.
• Web analytics can be useful tool to monitor the
performance of websites and Adwords campaigns helpful
to design successful online advertising
strategies by measuring visability and
performance.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

10. Session 3: Cont.
• Electronic data collection can provide significant gains for
firms by lowering response burden, resulting in higher
quality data and more timely delivery for statistical offices.
• Further research into methods used in tourism demand
surveys is needed especially when there is rapid decrease in
listed land-lines.
• As an element of regional TSA a supply-side tourism
statistic survey can be improved using hedonic analysis.
• Using register based or LFS employment data already
available is a promising method, also in understanding
quality aspects of tourism jobs.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

11. Session 4: Using Tourism Statistics to
Inform Business and Policy Decisions
• Regional TSA provide a promising economic basis for
policy making but it remains difficult to obtain data on a
disaggregated level and to take into account
indirect/induced effects.
• Propensity to travel dependent upon a range of
demographic, social, cultural household characteristics
and such analysis are of important to inform policy
making and marketing strategies.
• To develop effective policies/responses to support
sustainable tourism it is necessary to understand specific
sustainability related problems and tourism indicators
need to be homogeneous, well-defined,
continuous and flexible.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

12. Session 4: Cont.
• DMOs should follow an approach to improving
destination competitiveness, that optimises the use of
public resources. Such an approach focusing effectiveness
and efficiency evaluation depends on the type of action,
objectives, effects to be measured and availability of data.
• Tourist expenditure in open areas can be under-estimated
due often to a focus on accommodation stats only which
risks being incompatible with macro estimates if a
bottom-up approach is used.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics

13. Session 5: Coherence and
Comparability of Tourism Statistics
• Day trippers contribute to the tourism economy through their use
transportation, tourist guides, restaurants and shops in the country
according to their motivation and profile.
• Regular trips need to be quantified separately as they provide a relevant
economic contribution and require regular monitoring by comparing
supply and demand data in order to take into account underground
production.
• To empower tourism stakeholders and provide them with the market and
benchmarking information they need – use available harmonised data;
provide access to original sources; put data into context.
• Benchmarking regions offers significant benefits to industry and policy
makers (including shared experiences), but to ensure comparability, a
range of issues need to be addressed: boundaries;
coverage; differing research methodologies and
definitions; and frequency and timeliness of data.
11thth Global Forum on
11 Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics
Tourism Statistics

14. Conclusions and Food for Thought...
• How to monitor the effects of external shocks and the provision of
timely and robust data in order to develop quick and flexible
response strategies.
• Improve the understanding of tourist profiles and behaviour –
demand segmentation by different variables (e.g. holiday habits,
expenditure patterns etc.), marketing and policy development.
• New instruments to collect information (e.g. mobile and automated
data) require methods to explore potentialities and rules for robust
and comparable data.
• Regional analysis and transfer of methods and instruments to
collect information from the national level.
• Methodological guidelines for economic impact at the regional level
and approaches to measure the black economy.
• In all areas there is the need to focus on improving
the effectiveness and efficiency and promoting
their value to stakeholders and to inform the
policy debate.
11th Global Forum on
Tourism Statistics