Tourism Notes

Inbound Tourism
Unless otherwise stated, reported data concentrates on International Tourism as measured from an Inbound Tourism perspective, i.e. the tourism received by any given destination country (and in a few cases territories) from non-residents travelling to that destination.

The most common unit of measure used to quantify the volume of International Tourism for statistical purposes is the number of International Tourist Arrivals. For a proper understanding of this unit, two considerations should be taken into account:

• Data refer exclusively to tourists (overnight visitors):a visitor who stays at least one night in a collective or private accommodation in the country visited. Same-day visitors are not included.
• Data refer to the number of arrivals and not to the number of persons. The same person who makes several trips to a given country during a given period will be counted as a new arrival each time, as well as a person who travels through several countries on one trip is counted as a new arrival each time.

Figures on the volume of international tourism presented, preferably relate to the concept of international tourist arrivals at frontiers. However, as not all countries are collecting data according to this concept, another series may be used instead. The series are indicated as follows:

TF International tourist arrivals at frontiers (excluding same-day visitors);
VF International visitor arrivals at frontiers (including tourists and same-day visitors);
TCE International tourist arrivals at collective tourism establishments;
THS International tourist arrivals at hotels and similar establishments.

Outbound Tourism
Data on outbound tourism volume originates from two different sources and likewise relate to two dissimilar concepts:

• On one hand, many countries are reporting the number of outbound trips of their residents. Data availability and comparability, however, is still limited and it is often not clear whether the reported figures refer only to tourists or to visitors in general.
• On the other hand, data are synthesised from the data on inbound tourism to destination countries (an arrival received in a destination can also be taken as an arrival generated by the generating country). Data on arrivals to destinations broken down by region of origin are taken to estimate and aggregate the number of arrivals originating from each region. The unit of measurement is the number of international tourist arrivals generated by the region of origin concerned. For a proper understanding, it should be borne in mind that these figures do not correspond to the number of trips, as one trip taken might result in various arrivals in destinations

Accommodation
As a measure for the capacity of accommodation, data is included on the number of rooms or the number of bed places in the country. When expressed in bed places, the number of rooms roughly will be half, as rooms on average count two bed places. The actual capacity of a country might eventually be larger, as some countries exclude hotels below a certain category or less than a certain size.

International Tourism Receipts and Expenditure

• International Tourism Receipts are the receipts earned by a destination country from inbound tourism and cover all tourism receipts resulting from expenditure made by visitors from abroad, on for instance lodging, food and drinks, fuel, transport in the country, entertainment, shopping, etc. This concept includes receipts generated by overnight as well as by same-day trips, which can be substantial, as will be the case with countries where a lot of shopping for goods and services takes place by visitors from neighbouring countries. It excludes, however, the receipts related to international transport contracted by residents of other countries (for instance ticket receipts from foreigners travelling with a national company). These receipts are covered in the separate category.
• International Fare Receipts which for most recent years is estimated at about 18 per cent of total tourism and fare receipts.
• International Tourism Expenditure is the expenditure on tourism outside their country of residence made by visitors (same-day visitors and tourists) from a given country of origin.

Data on receipts and expenditure related to international tourism are generally gathered in the framework of the Balance of Payments under the items 'Services, Travel, Credit and Debit' (International Tourism Receipts and Expenditure) and 'Transportation, Passenger Services, Credit and Debit' (International Fare Receipts and Expenditure). See the Balance of Payments Statistics Yearbook, Part 2 and Part 3 of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for details on methodologies, compilation practices and data sources.

The International Tourism Balance and International Fare Balance correspond to the net receipts or expenditure of a given country on respectively international tourism or international fares, i.e. receipts less expenditure.

Quantitative tourism-related data presented is based on a selection of data included in the UNWTO database on World Tourism Statistics. This database contains a variety of series for over 200 countries and territories covering data for most countries from the 1980's on. The database is maintained by the UNWTO Secretariat and is updated on a continuous base.

Except where otherwise indicated, statistical data has been collected by the UNWTO Secretariat from the official institutions of the countries and territories (UNWTO member as well as non-member countries) or from official international bodies, e.g. the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The data for individual countries are based on full year results, or projections, as communicated to the UNWTO Secretariat by the authorities of the countries and territories or disseminated through a news release, publication or on the Internet.

In the world and (sub)regional aggregates, estimates are included for countries and territories with data still missing based upon data available for a part of the year or the general trend for the region. In particular for the Middle East and Africa the regional and subregional aggregates for 2002 should be treated with caution as estimations are based on a relatively small number of countries and territories that supplied data for the entire year. In the tables, provisional figures are marked with an asterisk (*).

UNWTO tourism statistics generally refer to figures for a country as a whole. In the collection of statistics, however, except for independent states, there are also a number of dependencies or territories of special sovereignty included (for instance Hong Kong ( China ) or French Polynesia ). These territories report tourism figures independently and are for the sake of tourism statistics considered as an entity in itself. Because of this, where reference is made to "countries" the term generally should be taken to mean "countries and territories". In a few other cases, dependencies are not separately listed but included in the total for the country they depend upon (for instance Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man in United Kingdom ).

In general UNWTO does not collect data on the level of regions, states, provinces or specific destinations within a country (Hawaii is one of the few exceptions made because of its relevance for Asian outbound travel; in the overview tables, however, Hawaii is included in the United States figure). Most countries will have a further regional breakdown available as well as other series not included in the UNWTO database on World Tourism Statistics. Please refer to national sources for this data.

The regional country groupings are according to the UNWTO regional grouping.

The World Tourism Organization is aware of the limitations of the available statistical information on tourism. Despite the considerable progress made in recent decades, international tourism statistics are often not uniform, because definitions and methods of data collection tend to differ. Every user of this information should bear in mind that the international comparability of statistical data is still not optimal.

Tourism series in "Tourism Market Trends" reports
A number of derived series are included relating tourism volume to the size of the population or tourism receipts and expenditure to tourism volume. Ratios are based on simple divisions of the concept in question by the population or of the receipts or expenditure by the corresponding concepts:

• International Tourist Arrivals per 100 of inhabitants = International Tourist Arrivals / population * 100;
• Trips abroad per 100 of inhabitants   = Trips abroad / population * 100;
• International Tourism Receipts per International Tourist Arrival  = International Tourism Receipts / International Tourist Arrivals;
• International Tourism Receipts per International Visitor Arrival = International Tourism Receipts / International Visitor Arrivals;
• International Tourism Receipts per capita = International Tourism Receipts / population;
• International Tourism Expenditure per trip abroad = International Tourism Expenditure / Trips abroad;
• International Tourism Expenditure per capita = International Tourism Expenditure / population.

Financial data is generally collected and kept in the UNWTO database in US$ values. In the cases where countries report in local currency, values are transferred by UNWTO into US$ applying the average exchange rate for the corresponding year. However, part of the tables are also published in euros. These euro values are in general derived from the US $ values using the corresponding average annual exchange rates for the two currencies. The following exchange rates have been applied:

• Exchange rate US dollars versus euro
  As exchange rates fluctuate substantially over time, the evolution of International Tourism Receipts is also estimated in (weighted) local currencies. For this, receipts in US$ have been recomputed in local currencies using an exchange rate table provided by IMF. In order to take care of inflation, receipts have been put in constant prices using country data on inflation from IMF as deflator.

The data on international tourist or visitor arrivals and nights of international tourists by country of origin correspond to the series as included in the UNWTO Yearbook of Tourism Statistics. Please refer to the latter publication for additional series, methodological references and notes on the series for specific countries.

Information included, but not referring to tourism indicators, are in general taken from specialised international organisations and not collected by the UNWTO Secretariat from the individual countries and territories. Data are meant as indicators, providing a context for tourism performance and do not necessarily coincide fully with national data. The following series are included:

• Population
  Data refer to total midyear population as included in the International Database (IDB) of the International Programs Center (IPC) of the Population Division of the U.S. Bureau of the Census;
• Area
  Data on the dimension of the area of countries and territories are taken from the Statistical database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and refer to the total area of the country, including area under inland water bodies for the year 2000. In the case of Belgium and Luxembourg data is taken from national sources.
• Economic Indicators
  The series on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross Domestic Product per capita and economic growth (annual per cent change of Real Gross Domestic Product) are based on the World Economic Outlook (WEO) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).