Issues in Tourism Statistics: A Critical Review

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is a discussion of some major concepts and operational definitions involved in tourism statistics within Regulation 692/2011, with a cross-country comparison and an in-depth look at the Italian case. Data and information are derived from main documents of major international and national institutions and Eurostat metadata. Both demand-side and supply-side data sources on tourism are discussed. The work highlights the main differences in the data production processes of different EU countries, although they follow the same regulation. The main critical points are: the definition of usual environment and survey design for the demand-side data, as well as the statistical unit for the supply-side data, which does not coincide with that used in structural business statistics. The analysis is limited to those EU countries with complete available Eurostat metadata. Moreover, only household surveys relating to trips and vacations are considered for demand-side data (border surveys are not treated). The main contribution is concerned with the description of the current situation in the production of tourism statistics, by looking and their comparability for cross-country analyses and at the possibility of their integration and reconciliation in the perspective of building a system of tourism statistics.