What does tourism contribute to the economy and how can this be measured The answer involves more than just recording the number of tourists visiting a country in a given period?
However, developing more robust indicators of the economic contribution of tourism is not simple, and is the subject of a discussion paper released by Statistics SA earlier this week.
Tourism is defined as the "activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited".
Tourism has grown substantially as an economic and social activity. However, statistical information on the nature, progress and consequences of tourism is mainly based on quantitative statistics such as arrivals, overnight stays and values hidden in certain macroeconomic aggregates.
Clearly, tourism plays a significant role in the South African economy. But unlike output-defined industries such as agriculture and manufacturing, the primarily demand-defined tourism industry is not measured as a sector in its own right in national accounts.
This is because industries are classified according to the goods and services they produce, while tourism is a consumption-based concept that depends on the status of the consumer.
A major reason for the difficulties in measuring the size of tourism is that in the 1993 System of National Accounts (1993 SNA), industries are created on the basis of their activity or output, rather than on data about their customers. Tourism is defined by the characteristics of the consumers - the tourists - at the moment of consumption.
Tourist consumption includes goods and services that are "tourism characteristic" (accommodation, travel services) and "non-tourism characteristic" (retail trade). The key factor, from a measurement standpoint, is to relate purchases by tourists to the total supply of these goods and services.
The SNA does, however, provide for the development of tourism satellite accounts (TSAs) for the study of tourism-related industries and products.
A TSA is a statistical instrument used to measure the size of the tourism industry's contribution to the economy of a country according to international standards, concepts, classifications and definitions, which will allow for valid comparisons with other industries and, eventually, between individual countries and between groups of countries.
The fundamental structure of a TSA is based on the general relationship in an economy between the demand of goods and services generated by tourism on the one hand and their supply on the other.
In 2002 South Africa recognised that the preparation of a TSA was important, but could not be the responsibility of a single institution.
Although the national accounts division of Stats SA started with the TSA project in April 2003, it was accepted that the project should best be approached as a collaborative effort under the auspices of the national statistics system (NSS).
Apart from public and private institutions that have important administrative sources of data on tourism, six other institutions now play pivotal roles in the introduction of TSAs: Stats SA, the department of environmental affairs and tourism, the department of home affairs, the SA Reserve Bank, the SA Revenue Service and SA Tourism.
Analyse tourism from a macro-economic point of view.
Present tourism data which are strictly based on the principles of the SNA and are compatible with the recommendations on tourism statistics elaborated by the UN and the World Tourism Organisation.
Compare tourism with other similarly defined industries to make its statistics more robust.
Offer policy makers insights into tourism and its socio-economic functions and impacts.
Calculate tourism value added for a given list of industries in a coherent system.
Provide information on the employment profiles of the tourism industries.
Indicate the production function of tourism industries and illustrate the links between the tourism industries and the rest of the economy.
Provide an indication of the size of tourism capital investment and the means to analyse its link with tourism supply.
Find out what visitors buy and which industries benefit most from these purchases.
This week's release of a discussion document on the status of the TSA marks a major step in endeavours to measure and monitor the impact of tourism on the South African economy.
Pali Lehohla is statistician-general and head of Statistics SA. For information on Stats SA and its outputs, including more on the tourism satellite account, visit www.statssa.gov.za, or contact user services on (012) 310-8600.
Click here to download the discussion document on the Status of the tourism satellite account in South Africa.