The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) conducted a workshop on Tourism Statistics & Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) this week. The participants included eleven foreign delegates from six countries. In his welcome speech at the inaugural ceremony, Renton de Alwis, Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourist Board, emphasized the need to influence governments with facts and figures.
P M Leelaratne, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, corroborated that viewpoint, 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.
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