Assessing the Impact of Tourism in Regions Towards a Holistic Analysis?

Abstract

Whilst tourism has long been an area of policy interest at sub-national scale, statistical and analytical techniques have often been fragmented and partial, meaning that tourism authorities have not been able to demonstrate the economic contribution and wider impacts of the activity. The extension of the tourism satellite account (TSA) to the regional scale provides the first opportunity for regional agents to undertake consistent and defensible analyses based upon high quality data. Furthermore, the TSA offers an opportunity to extend analysis beyond the economic, and into the social and environmental realms. However, limitations in the TSA structure must be resolved before truly policy useful analysis can become the rule rather than the exception.