The basis for the recommendation was that there was limited economic information on tourism, despite observations suggesting that the economic impact of visitors is substantial in many regions. There was also a need for a framework which would provide credible measures of economic activities pertaining to tourism, on a similar basis to that available for other industries. Funding was subsequently provided to the ABS to supplement its efforts to develop better measures of the economic impact of tourism. A TSA has been recognised internationally as the best method for measuring the economic contribution of tourism and as an important information base for the calculation of its economic effects.
Tourism is essentially a demand concept.
Currently, the ABS compiles annual national supply and use tables which show the supply and use of goods and services for the whole economy. In order to develop the TSA, the 1997-98 table has been supplemented by additional detail on the supply and use of tourism related goods and services. In order to obtain this detail, the ABS expanded the scope and coverage of existing ABS source data collections for industries supplying tourism goods and services. The estimates of tourism gross value added and tourism GDP in this publication relate to the direct impact of tourism activity. Similarly, the employment measures also relate to this direct relationship between the visitor and the producer of the good or service.