State of the world’s tourism statistics and what to do about it

Abstract

Analogous to national economic statistics, national tourism statistics communicate the sizes of various tourism activities for individual countries. The World Tourism Organization annually compiles the national tourism statistics for most countries of the world. An analysis of the completeness of country reports discloses how extensive the Systems of Tourism Statistics (STS) are for 209 countries. Reporting countries are grouped into five tiers according to the extent of their STS. The study finds only 11% of countries fall in the most comprehensive STS tier, while 57% fall in the least extensive STS tiers. Logistic regression is employed to identify factors predicting tier membership and 2 among 12 are found to be significant predictor variables: Global Competitiveness and Political Freedom–Civil Liberties. This suggests which countries in higher tiers might assist tiers 4–5 countries in extending their STS. Additional recommendations for improving the extent of the world’s tourism statistics are presented.