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Tourism Statistics Sprint

Tourism statistics play a critical role in understanding and shaping the travel and tourism industry. Accurate data collection and analysis help governments, businesses, and stakeholders make informed decisions that drive economic growth, enhance visitor experiences, and promote sustainable tourism practices. Policymakers use the information to allocate resources effectively regarding infrastructure development or enhanced services that support the industry. Statistics on tourism help destination managers understand visitor preferences, behaviors, and demographic profiles. Finally, accurate Tourism data is a valuable tool for businesses and investors in the tourism sector, from airlines and hoteliers to tour operators and retail outlets as it helps them understand market trends, demand patterns, and customer preferences, enabling smarter investments, competitive pricing, and tailored services that meet the needs of tourists.

This webinar will help participants get a global perspective of the importance of tourism information from the perspective of users, showcase new developments regarding data sources and compilation methods, and dive into the measurement of new trends such as wellness and cultural tourism.

Session 1 – Welcome and Opening Remarks

  1. 7:00 am – 7:05 am: Opening Remarks

    Andre Loranger Co-Chair of the United Nations Network of Economic Statisticians and Chief Statistician of Canada

  2. 7:05 am – 7:10 am: Objectives of the Meeting

    Mariane Bien-Aimé, Assistant Director Statistics Canada

Session 2 – Unlocking the Power of Tourism Data

This session will provide a user perspective of how tourism is a vital industry with significant economic, social, and environmental benefits and how tourism data is crucial for policymaking, business planning and sustainability.

  1. 7:10 am – 7:25 am: Recent Developments to the System of Tourism Statistics

    This presentation will cover the role of tourism in sustainable development and measuring the sustainability of tourism. The speaker will provide an overview of the statistical framework for measuring the sustainability of tourism and provide some examples of pilot projects illustrating the use of the framework.

    Presenter: Clara van der Pol, Director AI Statistics, Standards and Data Department

  2. 7:25 am – 7:40 am: A Pulse on the Tourism Workforce: Knowing the People that Drive the Sector Forward

    Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada will present how it makes use of Tourism Labour Statistics to provide a breakdown of the workforce in tourism industries. The breakdown, by industry, geography and, most significantly, demographics, provides insight on the level of representation of specific equity-seeking groups in tourism industries. Through our multiple products, we paint a broad picture of the tourism workforce in Canada, in which we can identify our strengths and areas of improvement relative to other industries.

    Presenter: Ennio Palombizio, Senior Economist, Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada

  3. 7:40 am – 7:55 am: Tourism Industry Performance Dashboard: Consolidated Reporting for MATI Members.

    This presentation will provide a comprehensive summary of the different types of data commonly used within the tourism industry, with a special focus on the MATI Member Portal and Statistical Snapshots. It will demonstrate how these data resources support informed business decisions and strategic planning, while also identifying existing data gaps that need to be addressed.

    Presenter: Mohamed Yasir, Deputy Executive Director, Maldives Association of Tourism Industry

  4. 7:55 am – 8:10 am: Destination Canada’s Tourism Wealth & Wellbeing Index: A Holistic View of Tourism’s True Value

    The Wealth and Wellbeing Index is a comprehensive measurement framework designed to capture the true value of tourism, emphasizing sustainability, inclusivity, and community enrichment. This is a new approach that enables nuanced understanding of tourism’s broad-based contributions to national and regional well-being, beyond traditional economic metrics.

    Presenter: Michel Dubreuil, Lead Tourism Economist, Destination Canada

  5. 8:10 am – 8:25 am:

    Discussion

Health Break - 10 minutes

Session 3 – The Future of Tourism: Understanding and Measuring New Trends

Session 3 will showcase examples of work that addresses challenges related to scarce data sources and the use of innovative tools such as AI, machine learning and geospatial analysis to meet quality and timeliness challenges. The audience will also learn about the new trends that are shaping the future of tourism, such as wellness and cultural travelling, and the adoption of augmented reality. The objectives of making travel experiences more inclusive and reduce inequality for both travelers and tourism employees will also be explored.

  1. 8:35 am – 8:50 am: Measuring Tourism Acceptance in Austria. Background, Methodology and First Results

    The presentation is dealing with the rationale measuring tourism acceptance in Austria. Furthermore, the focus is on methodological principles such as the survey procedure, sampling and the design of the questionnaire. Finally, the results 2024 will be presented providing transparent insights into the social impact of tourism and form the basis for evidence-based measures.

    Presenters: Mr. Peter Laimer: Head Tourism Statistics Department and Ms. Rebecca Daul: Project Manager Travel Behavior and Tourism Acceptance

  2. 8:50 am – 9:05 am: The Future of Tourism: Understanding and Measuring New Trends in Bhutan

    This presentation will explore the emerging trends shaping the future of global tourism, with a focus on wellness and cultural travel experiences. It will highlight how access to reliable tourism data enables the Department of Tourism in Bhutan to respond to evolving traveler demands and design evidence-based strategies. The session will also discuss the impact of these trends on Bhutan’s tourism workforce and showcase how industry stakeholders are adapting to remain competitive and sustainable.

    Presenter: Ms. Phub Zam Asst. Tourism Officer, Bhutan Department of Tourism

  3. 9:05 am – 9:20 am: LLMs and User Accessibility of Data

    Public data and is often not easily accessible or easily interpreted by users, who could benefit a lot from reliable and comparable statistics. The Chatbot hAIdi is used specifically to overcome this issue of accessibility.

    Presenter: Fabian L. Schrey, PhD, Scientific Associate, Swiss Federal Statistical Office

  4. 9:20 am – 9:35 am: How Can Accessibility Indicators Inform Tourism Sustainability Analyses?

    The presentation will showcase indicators of accessibility to services and resources and discuss how they can inform tourism sustainability analyses.

    Presenter: Ana I. Moreno Monroy, Head of Territorial Statistics and Analysis Unit, OECD

  5. 9:35 am – 9:50 am

    Discussion

  6. 9:50 am – 10:00 am: Concluding Remarks

    Chair

Tourism statistics play a critical role in understanding and shaping the travel and tourism industry. Accurate data collection and analysis help governments, businesses, and stakeholders make informed decisions that drive economic growth, enhance visitor experiences, and promote sustainable tourism practices. Policymakers use the information to allocate resources effectively regarding infrastructure development or enhanced services that support the industry. Statistics on tourism help destination managers understand visitor preferences, behaviors, and demographic profiles.  Finally, accurate Tourism data is a valuable tool for businesses and investors in the tourism sector, from airlines and hoteliers to tour operators and retail outlets as it helps them understand market trends, demand patterns, and customer preferences, enabling smarter investments, competitive pricing, and tailored services that meet the needs of tourists.

This webinar will touch on the important issues associated with sustainable tourism, communication and dissemination of tourism data, as well as tourism data stewardship which involves responsible management and protection of tourism-related data, ensuring its accuracy, security, and ethical use.

Session 1 – Welcome and Opening Remarks

  1. 7:00 am – 7:05 am: Opening Remarks

    Andre Loranger Co-Chair of the United Nations Network of Economic Statisticians and Chief Statistician of Canada

  2. 7:05 am – 7:10 am: Objectives of the Meeting

    Chair

  3. 7:10 am – 7:20 am: Recap of Webinar 1

    Mariane Bien-Aimé, Assistant Director Statistics Canada

Session 2 – Tourism and Sustainability

Sustainable tourism prioritizes economic, social, and environmental aspects of travel, ensuring minimal negative impacts and maximizing positive contributions to local communities and the environment. This session will provide concrete examples of how countries are making strides towards achieving these objectives.

  1. 7:20 am – 7:40 am: Promoting Sustainable Tourism (The Malaysian Experience)

    The presentation will cover a broad overview of Malaysia's tourism landscape, its journey from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic recovery. The focus will be on key strategies for promoting sustainable tourism, with a specific emphasis on the National Ecotourism Plan and the significant potential of Nature-Based Tourism (NBT). The session will conclude with valuable experiences and recommendations for harnessing NBT's potential to ensure long-term tourism sustainability.

    Presenter: Zanariah Jiat, Statistician Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia

  2. 7:40 am – 8:00 am: Towards Harmonized European indicators on the Sustainability of Tourism

    Measuring the sustainability of tourism is one of the priority topics for policy makers and statisticians alike. To address this user need, but at the same time considering the constraint that data collection burden should not increase, Eurostat and the EU countries are currently drawing up a set of core sustainability indicators mainly derived from existing harmonized statistics available at Eurostat, from tourism statistics as well as from other areas of official statistics

    Presenter: Christophe Demunter, team leader tourism statistics, European Commission / EUROSTAT

  3. 8:00 am - 8:10 am

    Discussion

Health Break – 10 minutes

Session 3 – Data Stewardship, Dissemination and Communication

Dissemination and data stewardship are intertwined, focusing on making data available and ensuring its quality, accessibility, and responsible use. Various organizations will speak about their efforts in ensuring robust data stewardship while also ensuring that the information reaches users in a manner that is easily accessed and interpreted.

  1. 8:20 am – 8:40 am: Building Data Stewardship: Perspectives from Asia and the Pacific

    This presentation offers a concise overview of the data stewardship framework established by the UN Statistics Commission in 2020, emphasizing the critical role of data stewards. Regionally, it details how the ESCAP Statistics Division has incorporated data stewardship into its work programme to assist member states across the Asia-Pacific. This approach is intentionally generic, ensuring its applicability spans all statistical domains, including tourism statistics.

    Presenter:  Alick Mjuma, Statistician in the Economic and Environment Section of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

  2. 8:40 am – 9:00 am: The Canadian Tourism Data Collective: Building Trust and Scale with AI

    The Canadian Tourism Data Collective, powered by Destination Canada, is a national platform co-created with the Canadian tourism sector to meet the evolving need for high-quality, consistent, and actionable tourism data using a product-centric approach To enable scale and trust, we’ve applied artificial intelligence across the entire stack—from data management and governance to the features and applications that support insight generation and smarter decision-making.

    Presenter: Peter de Rama, Senior Executive Director Technology and Digital Transformation, Destination Canada

  3. 9:00 am – 9:20 am Measuring Tourism Industry GHG Emissions Using British Columbia Stats Economic Modeling Framework

    The presentation will showcase how BC Stats uses its input-output and tourism models to estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the tourism industry in British Columbia, using Statistics Canada’s data.

    Presenter: Rasim Jafarov, Senior Economist, BC Stats, Government of British Columbia, Canada

  4. 9:20 am – 9:40 am: Using Alternative Data Sources to Support Evidence-Based Tourism Policies

    Effective tourism policy making, planning and management relies on robust, timely and relevant data to inform policy and business decisions and ensure policies are well targeted and have the desired impact. However, traditional methods of collecting tourism data, while valuable, often face challenges such as high costs, slow processes, and declining response rates. Innovative data sources open up new opportunities to meet the demand from decision-makers for new, more granular and more timely data. Innovative data approaches can help enhance tourism measurement and provide a more comprehensive view of tourism dynamics, at national and sub-national level.

    Presenter: Julie Reimann, Economist, Tourism Unit, Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, OECD

  5. 9:20 am – 9:50 am

    Discussion

  6. 9:50 am – 9:55 am: Concluding Remarks

    Chair

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