Pilot Tourism Satellite Accounts for Greece: Results, Issues and Needs

This paper summarizes the main results and data issues of the first Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA) pilot project for Greece, which is one of the few countries in Europe which still have not developed TSA, depriving policy makers and the scientific community of a highly relevant tool for measuring tourism’s direct economic impact. The project involved the documentation of available data sources relative to their consistency with TSA-concepts, identification of data gaps, and recommendations for improvements. From establishing the TSA-Tables, total expenditures of inbound, domestic, outbound and internal tourism as well as their structure by consumption categories are defined, which constitutes the first step to measure the impact triggered by tourism demand. The results show how crucial it is for tourism analysis to properly measure all components included in tourism consumption, and to separately treat overnight from same-day visitors.