Resumen de Assessing a Tourism Satellite Account: Asses a programme for ascertaining conformance with United Nations standards

Cristi Frent, Douglas C. Frechtling

• The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is the method for measuring the economic contribution of tourism to a nation’s economy approved by the United Nations and other authoritative international organizations. While a considerable number of countries have developed TSAs, no programme has been proposed for determining how closely a given TSA conforms to the United Nations standards. The purpose of this paper is to present a programme for ascertaining the consistency of a given TSA with the United Nations standards and to apply this programme to a long-standing TSA, the United States Travel and Tourism Satellite Account (USTTSA). The results of this application are summarized and differences between the USTTSA and the United Nations standards are highlighted. The authors find that the programme is comprehensive, feasible in application and can improve the development, interpretation and comparisons of TSAs across countries.