On 20 October 2010, the World celebrated the first World Statistics Day (WSD), to raise awareness of the many achievements of official statistics premised on the core values of service, professionalism and integrity. UNWTO has the pleasure of joining United Nations sister agencies, international and regional organizations, and national statistical offices in celebrating this important event.

UNWTO has put in place a powerful conceptual framework for gathering basic statistics and indicators relevant to not only the tourism sector but also to the broader economic context in which tourism is embedded. The hallmark achievements in this sense are the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics 2008 and the Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework 2008, both approved by the United Nations Statistical Commission. Thanks to these Recommendations we have, for the first time, an international norm for measuring tourism that economists and others can work with, enabling us to address tourism within general macroeconomic analysis and policies.

It is the international community’s combined effort in producing the Recommendations and especially countries’ gradual achievements in implementing them (53 countries and counting) that deserve a special recognition on this day by all of us who care about tourism.

In moving ahead with this progress, and on occasion of WSD, UNWTO is proud to present:

the Factsheet on Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), a synopsis of one of the major statistical achievements in tourism;

the Policy Paper Positioning Tourism in Economic Policy: Evidence and Some Proposals, argues for more evidence-based policy in tourism and provides an overview of available official data and indicators that are relevant not only for the tourism sector but also for the broader economic context in which tourism is embedded;

the structure of its New Compendium of Tourism Statistics, enlarging the focus of its present Compendium to include domestic tourism, tourism industries and employment figures; and

the Understanding Tourism: Basic Glossary covering the key terms stemming from the United Nations-approved 2008 International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics and TSA.

The following document complements the above with a description of the System of Tourism Statistics, its foundations in the above mentioned International Recommendations and links to the National Statistical System, as well as UNWTO initiatives for further developing the Tourism Information System