Authors: Mihail Diakomihalis, Theodoros Pappas
Title: Proposal for an Information System of the Greek Tourism Satellite Account
Abstract
Tourism plays an important role in the economic and social development of destination countries around the world. The evaluation of its contribution to economic development is valuable both for the government and the economy of a country, as a decisive tool in the formulation of tourism policy, and for the analysis of the economic effects of tourism by researchers. It has been recognized and accepted internationally that the economic impact of tourism on a national economy cannot be conceptually determined on the basis of other statistical frameworks other than those already internationally developed and accepted, mainly the System of National Accounts (SNA). Therefore, Tourism Statistics must be homogenized in a conceptual and methodological framework that will follow the principles of SNA, but in which there will be the possibility of further flexibility to rationally address the needs of tourism as an economic field, something that can be achieved by development of the national Tourism Satellite Account (TSA).
TSA has been recognized as the most important tool for measuring the contribution of tourism to destination economies. However, issues such as data collection, processing and registration lead to the delayed issuance of TSA, have limited their immediate practical application in some countries, while their results refer to much older years. This paper gives a first look at the innovative TSA information system, which includes all the functions and procedures of updating the chain of TSA Tables, starting from data entry, storage and management of data, updating of TSA Tables. after the necessary statistical analysis, and finally the possibility of capturing the economic results of tourism activity in an economy.
The methodology applied allows the connection of the tables and the export of reliable and timely results. The proposed information system aims not only to improve the efficiency of tourism data management but also to facilitate their collection and ultimately the functionality and usefulness of ICTs.
The results expected from the proposed implementation will provide academics, professionals and tourism policy makers with new perspectives on the evaluation and improvement of tourism and on regional and national economic development. The TSA is integrated into the general information System of National Accounts (SNA). The difficulties that have occurred worldwide for the implementation of the TSA relate both to the Methodological Framework and to the proper processing of the data that will be used. Although many countries that implement their own TSA have successfully addressed these issues, they have not been able to introduce an integrated information system into the TSA database, in which data will be entered once from the appropriate sources and after the required configuration, so that the automated updating of the TSA Tables from a general Data Input table, to conclude and attribute the effects of Tourism on the economy of a country.
The way of integrating the data from the SNA Tables after the necessary processing and consideration of sources of tourism data in the TSA tables, their transition from one TSA table to the next, in order to seamlessly complete them and return the values of the economy attributed to the tourism activity of a country, are the subject of research of this paper.
The presentation of the paper is organized in the following sections: In the 1st section, there is a literature review in Greece and internationally for the Tourism Satellite Account, in the 2nd section, the methodological framework and the proposed modeling of the Information System of TSA are presented. In the 3rd section the suggestions and the corresponding conclusions are provided and finally in the 4th section the bibliography used is listed.
