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Annex 1
Methodological Note on UNWTO’s Estimates
on Worldwide Tourism Volumes
This Annex includes the methodological note on UNWTO’s estimates on worldwide tourism volumes
and tables of UNWTO approximations of consistent worldwide tourism volumes.
A1.1 Methodological Note on UNWTO’s Estimates on Worldwide Tourism
Volumes
For almost all countries in the world, tourism represents an important part of the economy. As tourism
is a broad and complex concept, which covers a great variety of activities, it is necessary to define it
carefully. To understand tourism properly, we should look more closely at what it includes and at the
relative weight of the various elements.
Existing tourism data present several constraints for emission inventories. For that reason, UNWTO
prepared for the purpose of this report a specific set of tables with approximations of consistent
worldwide tourism volumes for the reference year of 2005. These are based on the various indicators
available in its database as well as on air transport data from ICAO and IATA. These tables contain a
mix of hard data, estimations – missing data is extrapolated or derived from similar countries – and
approximations – where only little data is available.
A1.1.1 Definitions
Tourism
According to the System of Tourism Statistics (STS), ‘Tourism’ is defined as “[…] the activities of persons
travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive
year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from
within the place visited”.
‘Tourism’ refers to all activities of visitors, including both ‘tourists (overnight visitors)’ and ‘same-day
visitors’.
This concept can be applied to different forms of tourism. Depending upon whether a person is travelling
to, from or within a certain country the following forms can be distinguished:
• Inbound Tourism, involving the non-residents received by a destination country from the point of
view of that destination;
• Outbound Tourism, involving residents travelling to another country from the point of view of the
country of origin;
• Domestic tourism, involving residents of a given country travelling within that country.
Therefore, tourism covers not only international travel (i.e. inbound tourism from the point of view of
destinations, or outbound tourism from the point of view of generating markets); it also covers tourism
inside one’s country of residence (i.e. domestic tourism).
UNWTO, 9 July 2008