A Closer Look at Tourism: Sub-national Measurement and Analysis – Towards a Set of UNWTO Guidelines

The International Network on Regional Economics, Mobility and Tourism (INRouTe) and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) jointly issue this document in the framework of their cooperation agreement signed in July 2011, through which INRouTe provides technical support to UNWTO. Central to this support is the design of a set of guidance documents that will form the basis for future UNWTO guidelines on the measurement and analysis of tourism from the sub-national perspective. This perspective is crucial for a better understanding of the spatial distribution of domestic tourism (both in terms of flows and in terms of economic contributions), an issue recurrently highlighted by several UNWTO Member States as being of utmost importance.
"Towards a Set of UNWTO Guidelines" is the first in the "A Closer Look at Tourism: Sub-national Measurement and Analysis" series of guidance documents. It provides an overview of the INRouTe-UNWTO initiative, its objective, proposed recommendations and agenda for what is proposed as the first step to develop basic statistical information for regions and other sub-national territorial aggregations: the setup of a Regional Tourism Information System (R-TIS).