Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) – a brief explanation

DIW Econ was in charge of calculating the tourism satellite accounts for Germany and the federal states of Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein.

The methodology of the Tourism Satellite Account has been presented by the DITF in cooperation with DIW Econ in the following video.

Tourism plays an essential economic role in many countries and regions. However, meaningful information on the economic importance of tourism cannot be derived directly from official statistics and national accounts. The reason for this is that the official economic statistics record tourism as a cross-sectional industry, such as the health, music or sports industry, and not as a separate economic sector in its own right.

To record the value-added of tourism for the economy as a whole, it is therefore necessary to expand the general classification of economic statistics. The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) provides such an extension. It records the economic importance of tourism for the country or region, comparable to the economy as a whole and other industries.

With the internationally recognised methodology of the Tourism Satellite Account, it is possible to make comparisons between economic sectors, federal states and, if desired, states.

In the joint paper “Approaches to Measuring Tourism Economic Performance”, DIW Econ GmbH, the German Institute for Tourism Research (DITF) and dwif-Consulting GmbH & dwif e. V. have highlighted the different options for determining the economic impact of tourism. The tourism satellite account is more convincing than the demand-side target analysis due to its more comprehensive inclusion of tourism revenues, its (inter)national comparability and more precise determination of tourism gross value added and employment.

Approaches to measuring tourism economic performance – demand-side destination approach and tourism satellite account

Overview of the Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA) calculated by DIW Econ:

Comparison of results for selected federal states: