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The TSA project
Apart from being a new and especially relevant statistical instrument to analyse the economic importance of tourism, the development of a Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is considered a strategic project for UNWTO. The document The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA): A strategic project for the World Tourism Organization summarizes the components of this strategy.
Within the TSA development process, it is essential to develop the System of Tourism Statistics (STS), in which National Tourism Administrations (NTAs) must play a key role. The document General guidelines for National Tourism Administrations (NTAs) relative to the development of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) outlines the fundamental characteristics of this process as proposed by the UNWTO.
The UNWTO has prepared two documents explaining the content of the TSA:
- Basic Concepts of the TSA, which is meant to explain to a wide audience what the TSA is;
- an introductory course to the TSA, called TSA in depth: Analysing tourism as an economic activity. It draws on all the experience accumulated in the eight Regional Seminars that have been held to date, and makes use of the support materials developed for them. This course is aimed at both producers and users of tourism statistics, as well as researchers and university department members. The Iguazú Conference on “The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA): Understanding Tourism and Designing Strategies”, coorganized by UNWTO, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, from 3 to 6 October 2005, was an opportunity to asses the actual level of development, analysis and application of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) worldwide.
The UNWTO believes that, with this level of participation, the Conference served as a valuable forum of exchange of experiences and helped to delineate a set of basic goals that should guide its programme of work in the coming years.
One of these goals relates with the fact that there is increasing misuse of the term TSA, at both the national and sub-national levels. As a consequence, there is an increasing need for the TSA brand to be protected. As there is also a consensus that the UNWTO should begin to disseminate TSA data, it is necessary to find the most practical way to request from countries (basically NTAs and CSOs) an assessment of the conformance of their TSA methods to the recommended methodological framework for TSAs (in effect, a brand validation approach).
It is understood that such an initiative is consistent not only with the specific function of the UNWTO within the United Nations System, as mentioned in Article 13 of the Agreement between the United Nations and the World Tourism Organization, but also with the responsibility derived form the application of the Principles Governing International Statistical Activities in the field of tourism statistics.
It has also prepared other types of contributions as part of its project:
- With regard to the ongoing revision of SNA93 and BPM5, two consultations have been submitted to the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) (“Clarifying the Treatment of Travel Agency, Tour Operator, Travel Agency Services and Package Tours in SNA, Balance of Payments and TSA and Their Mutual Relationship” and “About the Correct Treatment of the Tourism Business Expenses in the Compilation of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA)”) and papers have been prepared on time share and its treatment in the TSA (“Tourism Statistics and the Measurement of Timeshare - Comments on World Tourism Organization Discussion Paper” and “Measuring Timeshare in the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) and Related Macroeconomic Frameworks (SNA93 and BPM5) - Position Paper (for discussion)”);
- As for options to complement the advance toward the TSA, the elaboration of a set of macroindicators has been proposed to make it possible to make progress toward the analysis of the economic contribution of tourism (an initial version, “Measuring the Economic Contributions of Tourism: A Proposal for some Basic Indicators”, was published in “Enzo Paci Papers on Measuring the Economic Significance of Tourism, volume 3”).
