Benefits of UN system to gauge tourism gains touted at meet
Stanley Fleetwood: The UNWTO consultant at the seminar yesterday on tourism marketing and statistics. Picture: Raul Padernal
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
TOURISM in Brunei and around the world has been improving over the past years. And with the help of a new method to precisely document this growth, measures can be taken to maximise the sector's revenues, participants to a seminar on tourism marketing yesterday heard.
Dr Sandra Carvao, UN World Trade Organisation's (UNWTO) deputy chief of market trends, competitiveness and trade in tourism services, said the growth of the world's tourism industry in 2007 exceeded the expectations of the UNWTO.
From preliminary results, she said international tourist arrivals in the Asia-Pacific reached 185 million in 2007, accounting for 21 per cent of the world share.
Brunei saw international tourist arrivals grow 12.9 per cent in 2007, which is near the Southeast Asian average change of 11.8 per cent.
By 2020, international tourist arrivals were expected to reach 1.6 billion, as forecasted by the UNWTO.
Given the projected growth, the UN agency has been pushing countries to adopt a system to better measure the sector's contributions to their economies.
Dr Stanley Fleetwood, tourism statistics expert from Australia and a consultant of UNWTO, said the new measure can be an important tool for public and private sectors since it will identify the range of industries that supply visitors, or tourists and also the component industries' reliance on tourism.
The method is separate from the core national account and can be used to measure the direct effect of tourism on the country's economy.
The method, also called, Tourism Satellite Account, or TSA has been introduced in many countries. TSA measures the direct effect of tourism and not the indirect effects.
The TSA showed how much of the exports made by the country was directly resulting from tourism. It also showed the amount of employment generated directly from tourism.
However, TSA is an expensive, complicated system which requires the cooperation of many organisations in order to acquire all the relevant data needed to calculate the results shown in the account.
On the plus side, the credibility of TSA may outweigh the disadvantages since it is included in the total official national account and the high quality data inputted into TSA is produced in an objective, unbiased manner.
The UNWTO is a specialised agency of the UN and the leading international organisation in the field of tourism. It serves as a global forum for tourism policy issues and a practical source of tourism know-how.
The Brunei Times
Dr Sandra Carvao, UN World Trade Organisation's (UNWTO) deputy chief of market trends, competitiveness and trade in tourism services, said the growth of the world's tourism industry in 2007 exceeded the expectations of the UNWTO.
From preliminary results, she said international tourist arrivals in the Asia-Pacific reached 185 million in 2007, accounting for 21 per cent of the world share.
Brunei saw international tourist arrivals grow 12.9 per cent in 2007, which is near the Southeast Asian average change of 11.8 per cent.
By 2020, international tourist arrivals were expected to reach 1.6 billion, as forecasted by the UNWTO.
Given the projected growth, the UN agency has been pushing countries to adopt a system to better measure the sector's contributions to their economies.
Dr Stanley Fleetwood, tourism statistics expert from Australia and a consultant of UNWTO, said the new measure can be an important tool for public and private sectors since it will identify the range of industries that supply visitors, or tourists and also the component industries' reliance on tourism.
The method is separate from the core national account and can be used to measure the direct effect of tourism on the country's economy.
The method, also called, Tourism Satellite Account, or TSA has been introduced in many countries. TSA measures the direct effect of tourism and not the indirect effects.
The TSA showed how much of the exports made by the country was directly resulting from tourism. It also showed the amount of employment generated directly from tourism.
However, TSA is an expensive, complicated system which requires the cooperation of many organisations in order to acquire all the relevant data needed to calculate the results shown in the account.
On the plus side, the credibility of TSA may outweigh the disadvantages since it is included in the total official national account and the high quality data inputted into TSA is produced in an objective, unbiased manner.
The UNWTO is a specialised agency of the UN and the leading international organisation in the field of tourism. It serves as a global forum for tourism policy issues and a practical source of tourism know-how.
The Brunei Times
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