TOURISM SATELLITE ACCOUNTS FOR REGIONS? A REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT ISSUES AND AN ALTERNATIVE

The extension of the tourism satellite account (TSA) to the regional scale is an opportunity for regional policymakers to undertake consistent and defensible analyses of the tourism economy and its interconnections based upon high-quality and comparable data. However, limitations in the TSA structure will need to be resolved before policy useful analysis can become the rule rather than the exception. The paper reviews the development of TSAs at sub-national levels and goes on to examine their usefulness to policymakers, and how far problems with the framework can be overcome in a practical manner.