Tourism Satellite Account

A Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is the internationally agreed statistical framework for measuring the economic contribution of tourism in a way that is consistent with, and comparable to, the System of National Accounts. Because tourism is not a single industry but a demand-defined activity that cuts across accommodation, transport, food service, recreation and more, it is invisible in the standard production-based accounts. The TSA solves this by building a 'satellite' set of accounts that confronts tourism demand (what visitors spend) with tourism supply (what industries produce), and from that reconciliation derives headline aggregates such as tourism direct gross value added and tourism direct GDP. The framework was codified in the Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework 2008, jointly issued by the UN Statistics Division, Eurostat, OECD and UNWTO, giving countries a common, comparable basis for tourism statistics.