Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Outward visitors seem to attract less attention from the pollsters and the
enumerators. Of course, one country's outward visitor is another country's
(perhaps several countries) inward visitor, and a much more welcome sort
of visitor, too, being both a source of revenue and an emblem of the
destination country's appeal in the international market. This has meant
that governments have tended to be generally more keen to measure
inward than outward tourism, or at any rate, having done so, to publish the
results.
(Withyman 1985:69)
This statement indicates that governments are more concerned with the direct effect of
tourism on their balance of payments. Yet such statistics are also utilised by marketing
arms of national tourism organisations to base their decisions on who to target in
international campaigns. The wider tourism industry also makes use of such data as part
of their strategic planning and for more immediate purposes where niche markets exist.
Even so, Shackleford (1980) argued that the collection of tourism statistics should be a
responsibility of the state to meet international standards for data collection (WTO 1996).
However, it is increasingly the case that only when the economic benefits of data
collection can be justified will national governments continue to compile tourism
statistics. Where resource constraints exist, the collection and compilation of tourism
statistics may be impeded. This also raises important methodological issues related to
what exactly is being measured. As Withyman (1985) argued:
In the jungle of international travel and tourism statistics, it behoves the
explorer to step warily; on all sides there is luxuriant growth. Not all data
sources are what they appear to be—after close scrutiny some show
themselves to be inconsistent and often unsuitable for the industry
researcher and planner.
(Withyman 1985:61)
The key point Withyman (1985) recognises is the lack of comparability in tourism data in
relation to what is measured (e.g. is it visitor days or visitor nights?) and the procedures
and methodology used to measure international tourism.
Frechtling (1976a) concluded that the approaches taken by national and international
agencies associated with international tourism statistics were converging towards
common definitions of trip, travel and traveller (see Chadwick 1994 for a fuller
discussion). Yet the principal difficulty which continues to be associated with this is
whether business travel should be considered as a discrete activity in relation to tourism.
Chadwick (1994:75) notes that 'the consensus of North American opinion seems to be
that, despite certain arguments to the contrary …business travel should be considered part
of travel and tourism'. While BarOn (1984) examines the standard definitions and
terminology of international tourism as used by the UN and WTO, research by Ngoh
(1985) is useful in that it considers the practical problems posed by such definitions when
attempting to measure international tourism and find solutions to the difficulties.
Latham (1989) suggests that the main types of international tourism statistics collated
relate to
