Publication:  2008 (pdf)

Publication: 2001 (OECD bookshop)

Language: English, French

Pages: 138

Tables: 11

ISBN: 9789264193635 

OECD Code: 782001011E1 

The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is a standard statistical framework and the main tool for the economic measurement of tourism. It has been developped by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Organisation for Economic Co-opération and Development (OECD), the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) and the United Nations Statistics Division. The Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework 2008  (also known as the TSA: RMF 2008) provides the updated common conceptual framework for constructing a TSA. It adopts the basic system of concepts, classifications, definitions, tables and aggregates of the System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008), the international standard for a systematic summary of national economic activity, from a functional perspective.

The TSA thus allows for the harmonization and reconciliation of tourism statistics from an economic (National Accounts) perspective. This enables the generation of tourism economic data (such as Tourism Direct GDP) that is comparable with other economic statistics. Exactly how the TSA does this relates to the SNA logic of contrasting data from the demand-side (the acquisition of goods and services by visitors while on a tourism trip) with data from the supply-side of the economy (the value of goods and services produced by industries in response to visitor expenditure).

The TSA can be seen as a set of 10 summary tables, each with their underlying data:

♦   inbound, domestic tourism and outbound tourism expenditure,

♦   internal tourism expenditure,

♦   production accounts of tourism industries,

♦   the Gross Value Added (GVA) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) attributable to tourism,

♦   employment,

♦   investment,

♦   government consumption, and

♦   non-monetary indicators.