UNWTO Regional Workshop on Measuring Tourism in Asia and the Pacific

Asia and the Pacific
15 Mar 23

UNWTO jointly organizes the UNWTO Regional Workshop on Measuring Tourism in Asia and the Pacific with the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation and Nepal Tourism Board on 15 – 17 March, through the kind support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea.

BACKGROUND

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the UN specialized agency mandated to collect, analyse, publish, standardize, improve the statistics of tourism and to promote the integration of these statistics within the sphere of the United Nations system.

Tourism has an impact on the economy, the natural and built environment, the local population at the places visited and the visitors themselves. Owing to this range of positive and negative impacts and the wide spectrum of stakeholders involved, there is a need for a holistic approach to tourism development, management and monitoring. This approach is supported by UNWTO in order to formulate and implement national and local tourism policies.

Feasible, relevant, and reliable data are increasingly necessary to understand the economic, social and environmental aspects of tourism for sustainable development. These measures need to be produced in a harmonized way across countries and destinations so as to communicate progress effectively, benchmark performance, identify best practices and streamline tourism in sustainable development policy and funding mechanisms.

In response to increasing calls by tourism stakeholders for more and better data, an international effort is underway to develop a measurement Framework that integrates information on the economic, social and environmental dimensions of tourism, to support international comparability and credibility. The Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism will complement the 2 existing standards for tourism measurement:

The International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics that enables the measurement of visitors, their expenditure and the tourism industries;
The Tourism Satellite Account that allows for the measurement of the economic contribution of tourism.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVE

The Workshop aims to improve the statistical capacity in the field of tourism statistics for the participating countries in the region to be able to carry out the following:

promote the development of the System of Tourism Statistics as a necessary condition in order to make progress in the measurement and analysis of tourism;
begin the tasks contemplated in the different stages recommended by UNWTO for the development of a TSA;
make the necessary steps towards the piloting of Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism.

TARGETED AUDIENCE OF THE WORKSHOP (BY INVITATION ONLY)

The High-level Discussion “Measuring Tourism for People, Planet and Prosperity” is geared towards high-level officials in National Tourism Administrations and National Statistical Offices. The technical trainings sessions target statistics professionals and managerial staff with responsibilities in the field of tourism statistics and/or Tourism Satellite Account, who work in different types of institutions, such as:

National Tourism Administrations;
National Tourism Organization;
National Statistical Offices;
Balance of Payments departments of Central Banks;
Entities in charge of border statistics (arrivals and departures of international travellers) such as Migration/Interior Departments;
Business Associations of Tourism Activities.

DOCUMENTS

PRESENTATION

Keynote speech: The System of Tourism Statistics in Nepal - Dr. Hem Raj Regmi, Division Chief, Social Statistics Division, National Statistics Office, Nepal

Session 1 – The path to smooth governance for System of Tourism Statistics