Tourism Satellite Account (TSA)

A Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is a statistical accountant framework in the field of tourism and measures the goods and services according to international standards of concepts, classifications and definitions which allow valid comparisons from country to country in a consistent manner. A complete TSA contains detailed production accounts of the tourism industry and their linkages to other industries, employment, capital formation and additional non-monetary information on tourism.

Why TSA is necessary
Statistical reasons:

Unlike output defined industries, such as agriculture or manufacturing, the primarily demand-defined tourism industry is not measured as a sector in its own right in National Accounts. Most of the statistical information provided on the specifics and developments of tourism is primarily based on arrivals and overnight stay statistics as well as balance of payments information.

Economic policy reasons:
Europe is the tourist destination N° 1 in the world. Depending on the definition of the tourism sector it employs between about 8.6 and 24 million people in the Community (corresponding to around 4 and 11 % of total labour force) and creates 4 or 11 % of the Community’s GDP.

This major economic importance of tourism for the economy - made evident by some TSA-based estimations - increased the awareness of the importance of the sector, its socio-cultural and environmental impacts as well as its contributions to the achieving of the goals of the Lisbon strategy - to increase economic growth and to create more and better jobs.

The currently available statistics, however, do not sufficiently grasp the whole economic phenomenon of tourism.

History
In the late 1980s the OECD, UN and WTO encouraged the evolution of a tourism specific economic data system which is coherent with the concepts, classifications and definitions of national accounting standards. A Recommended Methodological Framework was concluded between UN, OECD, the World Tourism Organisation and Eurostat in 2000 and published by the UN in 2001.

EUROSTAT worked out an implementation manual for the EU with the aim to provide operational guidelines for empirical compilation of the TSA in an efficient procedure.

Source: Source: European Commission, Enterprise and Industry Tourism