Give me a number. Evaluating economic impacts of tourism

Tourism's economic contribution is not explicitly included in the System of National Accounts and its direct contribution is usually computed via the Tourism Satellite Accounts. The total economic contribution of tourism, including indirect and induced impacts, is not estimated by official statistics but only by public and private institutions through different approaches, leading to heterogeneous results that limit their potential for policy-making. To address those limitations, this study: (i) presents a semi-automated procedure to compute time series of tourism's total contribution based on official statistics, and (ii) compares them with those estimated by the World Travel & Tourism Council and the Tourism Industrial Ecosystem approach of the European Commission to assess the robustness of estimates to the use of different procedures. Practical implications consist in obtaining a reliable methodology to estimate tourism's economic impact in a timely manner, which can inform policy-making and support tourism development.