Sustainability Will Shape New Standards for Tourism Statistics

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is working on creating a framework that will better measure the sustainability of tourism.

The new initiative is focused on developing specific, credible data standards for measuring the impact of tourism around the world with regard to sustainability. The goal is to have the new standard adopted by the UN Statistics Commission, according to a just-released UNWTO statement.

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Known as Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism, or MST, the new framework now being created is based on successful pilot studies that were conducted in Germany, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, which were designed to test whether credible and comparable data could be generated.

“In order to develop tourism potential, better manage the sector, and support effective evidence-based policy decisions, there is a need to better measure tourism using high-quality official statistics covering economic, social, and environmental sustainability,” UNWTO said in a statement. “MST aims to expand existing tourism measurement beyond its primarily economic dimension to also measure social and environmental dimensions.”

An MST working group is now refining and documenting three statistically-based tourism indicators that can be used to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets.

Such statistical frameworks enable countries to produce data that is credible and comparable across countries, time periods and other standards.

The UNWTO coordinates development of tourism-related indicators with countries and UN agencies. The next step for the new initiative will be to present the draft framework during the UNWTO’s 2019 meetings of its governing bodies.