OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2024

Chapter 3. Building the evidence base for sustainable tourism policies

Abstract

Recent crises spurred momentum for sustainable tourism and placed a renewed focus on addressing unbalanced tourism development and measuring tourism success differently. The strong rebound in tourism demand has highlighted the need for more and better data to manage the impacts of these tourism flows on destinations, local communities, and the environment. Measuring the economic, environment, and social dimensions of tourism is a significant area of focus at international, national and subnational level. Navigating the different approaches and frameworks and understanding how these fit with the policy needs in countries remains a challenge. This chapter takes stock of the different frameworks and approaches to address data gaps and support the sustainable development of tourism. It highlights the need for further work to develop and implement practical, granular and timely measures linked to the policy needs of destinations to plan and manage tourism sustainably.

Recognition of tourism’s contribution to economic and social progress increased significantly in the wake of the crises triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for the tourism sector to 'build back better' led to increased momentum for sustainable tourism and a renewed focus on addressing unbalanced tourism development. However, the strong rebound in demand and the economic priority to return to pre-COVID levels, has reinforced the need to measure tourism success differently. Evidence-based policy action is needed to strike a better balance between the benefits and costs associated with tourism development and implement a vision for the future of tourism which is better aligned with sustainability principles and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (OECD, 2021[1]).

Governments at all levels need robust, timely and relevant data to better understand the impacts of tourism on economies, destinations, and local communities, and design targeted and concrete actions and manage the trade-offs to achieve better outcomes. However, the recent crises have revealed shortcomings in existing tourism data, not least with respect to measures to monitor the progress of sustainable tourism development and evaluate the effectiveness of strategies, policies, and programmes.

Improving the evidence base for sustainable tourism policies is not a new area of work. However, the topic has risen high on the policy and data agenda in recent years to support the shift to more sustainable models of tourism. This has resulted in significant work at international, national and subnational levels to better measure the economic, environment, and social dimensions of tourism. While collectively these efforts help to advance this important agenda, navigating the different approaches and frameworks and understanding how these fit with the policy needs in countries remains a challenge.

This chapter takes stock of the different frameworks and approaches to address data gaps and support the sustainable development of tourism. It examines initiatives to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism, building on work at country level and recent progress on forging international consensus on robust and comparable measures, including the internationally endorsed Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism and other initiatives. The chapter considers the need for further work to develop and implement practical, granular and timely measures linked to the specific context and priorities to plan and manage tourism sustainably in different places. The priority policy issues for sustainable tourism development identified from a survey of OECD member and partner countries are presented, stressing the importance of tailoring indicators and data tools to the policy needs of destinations.

Balancing tourism development for a more sustainable future

Sustainable tourism has been defined as tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social, and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities (UN Tourism and UNEP, 2005[2]). Significant progress has been made to highlight the importance of sustainable tourism development at all levels of government and in the private sector, including through the integration of tourism into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2022[3]). However, more needs to be done to translate this increased recognition into meaningful actions to promote sustainable tourism development and management. This requires the development of strategies and policies for more sustainable tourism, and measurement instruments, indicators and other tools to make the policies work on the ground (UN Tourism and UNEP, 2005[2]).

Sustainable tourism development is now mainstreamed in many national tourism policies, strategies, and plans, setting a path for future programmes and co-ordinated action. Many countries have developed new, or updated existing, tourism strategies and plans to reflect the changed and evolving policy context and priorities post-pandemic (Box 3.1). While the targets in the strategies remain primarily based on the role of tourism as a driver of economic development, broader sustainability targets and indicators to monitor progress are increasingly being embedded in these strategies or subsequently developed as part of the monitoring frameworks, at national and subnational level.

Box 3.1. Mainstreaming sustainability in tourism strategies – selected country examples

Australia: The THRIVE 2030 Strategy for sustainable growth contains over 60 actions including to restore the tourism sector to its pre-pandemic visitor spend of AUD 166 billion by 2024 and AUD 230 billion by 2030, with approximately 40% of this expenditure to go to regional Australia. A key action item has been the development of an industry sustainability framework and toolkit to provide clarity on what sustainability means for the tourism sector, to put forward a vision, goals and priority actions for the sector, and to assist businesses implement and improve sustainability practices.

Colombia: The Tourism Sector Plan 2022-2026 Tourism in Harmony with Life lays out a detailed roadmap to address the fundamental priorities of the tourism sector, with a particular emphasis on sustainability and inclusion. The overarching targets of the plan are to receive 7.5 million tourists over the four-year period and to employ an additional 300 000 people a month (on average) in activities associated with tourism by 2026. Initiatives promoting sustainable tourism seek to: strengthen co-operation; encourage innovation and knowledge exchange; prioritise the well-being of local communities and cultural and natural heritage; and promote sustainable economic development.

France: The Destination France Plan aims to revive and transform tourism by positioning France as the world's leading sustainable destination by 2030. France aims to: raise awareness of environmental issues linked with tourism; extend the tourism season towards ‘four seasons’; promote local tourism and enhance dispersal of tourists across the country; and increase the sustainability of accommodation infrastructure and decarbonise transport. The Plan sets out 20 measures across five strategic areas, including a target to invest EUR 44 million to support sustainable tourism infrastructure.

Iceland: The long-term vision Leading in Sustainable Development aims to position Iceland as a leader in sustainable development. The vision is built on four interconnected pillars, economy, community, environment, and visitors, that support the development of a profitable and competitive tourism industry in harmony with country and nation.

Slovenia: The Slovenian Tourism Strategy 2022-28 aims to implement a balanced growth scenario under the principle ‘a little more and much better’. The Strategy sets out five goals: increasing the quality and value of ‘four season’ tourism; increasing the satisfaction of workers and visitors; positioning tourism as a generator of value and sustainable development; decarbonisation; and ensuring a competent and efficient tourism governance structure. To monitor progress, the Strategy defines 14 indicators and 25 measures in total, with targets for 2028.

United States: The National Travel and Tourism Strategy 2022 aims to build a sector that is resilient to natural disasters, public health threats, and the impacts of climate change, and to build a sustainable tourism sector that protects natural resources, supports the tourism economy, and ensures equitable development. The US aims to reach 90 million international arrivals and US 279 billion in tourist expenditure by 2027. The overarching objective is underpinned by four strategic goals: promoting the United States as a travel destination; facilitating travel to and within the United States; ensuring diverse, inclusive, and accessible tourism experiences; fostering resilient and sustainable travel and tourism.

Tourism, more than many other sectors, is highly dependent on the quality of the environment while also impacting it. Growth-oriented tourism models prioritising economic impact often come with unintended negative impacts on the environment and communities and negative economic externalities, including over the longer term. A more balanced model of tourism development and management which considers all three dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental and social) is needed to ensure that immediate and often short-term economic benefits do not compromise the environment or social fabric of a destination, and, in turn, longer term economic growth.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to balance tourism development and management. Previous OECD Tourism Committee work has highlighted the need for a robust, timely and disaggregated system of tourism statistics to improve the management of tourism and determine the desired type and scale of tourism appropriate for individual destinations (OECD, 2021[1]). Policies need to consider the specific characteristics of tourism development for each destination, and understanding the trade-offs of different tourism development models is an area that requires more work.

Measuring and monitoring the sustainability of tourism

Measuring and monitoring the sustainability of tourism has been an area of work for over three decades, at country and international level (for example the OECD Indicators for the Integration of Environmental and Sustainability Concerns into Tourism Policies, 2003; the UN Tourism Guidebook on Indicators of Sustainable Development for Tourism Destinations 2004; European Commission’s European Tourism Indicators System, 2016; European Commission’s EU Tourism Dashboard, 2023; UN Tourism’s Statistical Framework for Measuring Sustainable Tourism, 2024). During this time the quality and availability of tourism data has continued to advance, but has typically focused on capturing the economic impacts, guided by the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics and Tourism Satellite Accounts methodological framework.

The recent endorsement of the Statistical Framework - Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (SF-MST) by the United Nations Statistics Commission is an important step forward in forging international consensus on the production of reliable and comparable data on the economic, environmental, and social aspects of tourism (UN Tourism, 2023[4]). This UN Tourism-led statistical framework, under the leadership of co-chairs Austria and Spain, provides fundamental concepts, definitions, and data organisation structures for tourism statistics across economic, social, and environmental impacts. Further work is needed to provide methodological guidance to support the concrete implementation of the framework and derive a meaningful set of internationally comparable indicators for sustainable tourism development.

Building on this progress, more work is needed to measure and monitor a wider set of outcomes including social and environmental impacts as well as negative economic externalities not typically accounted for when looking at economic impacts, which can be more challenging to quantify in a consistent and meaningful way. The environmental dimension and related negative economic externalities such as the depletion of natural assets have received more attention of late, also benefiting from wider environmental measurement frameworks like the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA). However, the measurement of social impacts is lagging. This is in part because the social dimension is often associated with peoples’ subjective perceptions, which can be difficult to measure in a comparable way (OECD, 2023[5]).

Considerable progress has been made in recent decades to develop robust and comparable measures for social impacts, including the OECD Well-being Framework. For example, the OECD Indicators for Measuring Well-being and Social Progress and the OECD Better Life Index provide a framework to measure and compare living conditions and quality of life across countries (including housing expenditure, work-life balance, feeling safe walking alone at night) (OECD, 2023[6]).

Potential exists to build on these frameworks and tailor them for the tourism context. Combined with tourism specific measures, like tourism visitation and seasonality, well-being indicators could help to understand and address some core environmental and social challenges for tourism. Further developing these indicators at the sub-national level could provide opportunities to monitor the sustainable development of tourism in popular tourism destinations. The experience of Sweden to adapt the OECD Better Life Index to measure quality of life at municipal level could provide learnings for how the Index could be adapted to also provide a better understanding of the social impact of tourism at destination level.

The strong push to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism has resulted in many initiatives running concurrently. Together these initiatives are contributing to advancing the agenda. However, navigating this diverse and dynamic body of work can be challenging for policy makers and data practitioners to understand the contribution and purpose of different initiatives and determine where to best focus limited resources for maximum impact. Table 3.1 sets out an overview of the different frameworks that are being used to measure and monitor the sustainable development of tourism, and their associated uses, benefits and challenges.

Table 3.1. Navigating frameworks for the measurement of sustainable tourism

Framework type	Benefits	Challenges	Examples
Statistical framework	Internationally agreed with established statistical concepts Often make sense at a political or strategic scale	Time lag of data, lack of granularity, resources required to calculate, not necessarily relevant for specific issues	Statistical Framework – Measuring Sustainable Tourism (SF-MST), Recommended Methodological Framework – Tourism Satellite Account (RMF:TSA)
Methodological framework	Internationally comparable with established methods linked to the statistical concepts	Not necessarily relevant for specific issues	International Recommendations on Tourism Statistics (IRTS)
Comparable indicator set	Internationally comparable (when indicators are calculated for multiple countries), based on existing and established data	Lack of granularity, not necessarily relevant for specific issues	World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Development Index, European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS), EU Tourism Dashboard
Targeted Indicator set	Country-specific or targeted specifically to issue, policy and/or strategy	Not necessarily internationally comparable, may not even be comparable between regions	Sustainable Travel Finland, UNWTO-JICA Toolkit of Indicators for Projects

International initiatives to monitor and benchmark the sustainability of tourism

Identifying and implementing indicators to effectively measure and monitor progress has proven challenging. There is currently no internationally agreed set of indicators to support balanced and sustainable tourism development. Drawing on the experiences and insights from existing and ongoing recent initiatives at international and country level provides an opportunity to advance efforts to develop and use indicators for policy making, and provide a basis for valuable comparison and benchmarking between countries (UN Tourism, 2023[4]; European Commission, 2022[7]; European Commission, 2016[8]; ETC/ULS, 2018[9]) (Annex 1: Table A.1).

At the global level, the SF-MST provides a framework from which to derive a core set of international indicators, but further work and practical guidance is now needed on the specific indicators and how to measure them. UN Tourism have proposed an initial set of indicators as part of the wider MST initiative, and it is intended that compilation guidance will be developed to support the production of comparable data and indicators.

At the European level, improving statistics and indicators for tourism is a key pillar of the Agenda for Tourism 2030 and the EU Tourism Transition Pathway, and is the most common topic for pledges and commitments from public and private stakeholders (Council of the European Union, 2022[10]; European Commission, 2022[11]; European Commission, 2023[12]). A range of initiatives are underway to advance this agenda, including the work by Eurostat to develop and implement a set of indicators to measure the sustainability of tourism based on available data, the EU Tourism Dashboard, and the work of the Together for EU Tourism (T4T) expert group, which has a dedicated topic on measuring sustainability, with results to be shared with all stakeholders through a forthcoming Stakeholder Support Platform.

Work is also advancing in the private sector, to develop and implement initiatives to support tourism businesses and destinations in monitoring their levels of sustainability performance, providing performance indicators to provide guidance in measuring compliance with the criteria. For example, the WTTC Travel and Tourism’s Global Footprint dashboard provides indicators across all the pillars of environmental, social, economic and the SDGs. Other examples include the World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Development Index and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council standards for sustainability in travel and tourism (Box 3.2).

Box 3.2. Recent international sustainable tourism indicator frameworks – selected examples

Building on the work to develop and implement these existing frameworks provides an opportunity to accelerate the process of developing indicators. Selected samples of existing international work on indicator frameworks are outlined below.

• European Tourism Indicators System – The framework consists of 43 core indicators supplemented by additional indicators. It is a voluntary tool designed to measure the sustainability of European tourism destinations (European Commission, 2016[13]).

• EU Tourism Dashboard – Developed in response to the pandemic, the Dashboard presents 19 indicators and 13 descriptors designed to promote and monitor the green and digital transitions and the socio-economic resilience of the tourism sector. The starting point for preparing the indicators has been the identification of data which is available across all EU member states (European Commission, 2023[14]).

• UN Tourism proposal for a set of indicators to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism – Linked with the work to prepare the SF-MST, UN Tourism proposed a set of 30 initial indicators at the 4^th Expert Group on Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism in September 2023 (UN Tourism, 2023[15]).

• World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Development Index – Previously focused on competitiveness, the Index was revised with a focus on monitoring the resilience and sustainable development of tourism. A pillar dedicated to ‘Travel and Tourism Sustainability’ tracks 24 indicators across three themes (environmental sustainability, socioeconomic impact and travel and tourism demand sustainability) (WEF, 2024[16]).

• World Travel and Tourism Council ‘Travel and Tourism’s Global Footprint’ dashboard – estimates the economic, social and environmental footprint of the tourism sector globally across 11 core measures and seven of the SDGs related to tourism. The tool allows for benchmarking across countries and international regions, while also providing historical data where available, to allow countries to monitor their own progress (WTTC, 2024[17]).

Existing work to develop and implement indicators provides a platform to build on and accelerate efforts for new data and indicators. An analysis of existing international frameworks (Annex A) shows that as the discussion around sustainable tourism has evolved, so have the measurement frameworks. While most frameworks and indicators are structured around the pillars of economic, environmental and social sustainability, there is considerable diversity in the scope and range of indicators covered which creates challenges for international comparability as well as for decision-makers in destinations (with often limited capacity and resources) to understand which priority issues and indicators to focus on and collect.

In general, the following measures and associated indicators are included in most frameworks:

• Economic measures: for example, seasonality, visitor market share, share of GDP, share of employment, average expenditure, and average length of stay.

• Environmental measures: for example, water and energy consumption, air and greenhouse gas emissions, waste (water and solid), environmental certification and mode of transport.

• Social measures: for example, gender equality, accessibility of tourism sites, satisfaction of the local community, tourist satisfaction, valorisation of culture and heritage.

An important consideration when looking at indicator sets is their interlinked nature. For example, high greenhouse gas emissions not only accelerate climate change, but also impact on the health of communities, and as a result have economic impacts in a variety of areas.

Country initiatives to develop indicators for sustainable planning and management

In many countries work is underway to develop and implement tailored indicator sets and data tools, to better respond to the tourism policy needs and strategic priorities in their country. In some countries these indicator frameworks are standalone tools; other countries have created sustainable tourism monitoring frameworks linked directly to their national tourism strategies. While international indicator frameworks provide a robust set of indicators to measure sustainable tourism development, they may lack the specificity to support national policy priorities and monitor progress. Indicators need to be measured and monitored at the appropriate spatial and temporal scale. They need to be linked to the core policy issues to be effective for decision makers and are only of value when the data exists to measure them.

Many country initiatives draw on work that has already been established in various international frameworks. For example, the Sustainable Tourism Indicator System in Portugal is fundamentally based on the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS). The 43 economic, social and environmental indicators are linked to concrete targets in Portugal’s Tourism Strategy 2027, and cover 11 thematic areas including seasonality, economic benefits, employment, accessibility, pressure, tourist satisfaction, local satisfaction, environmental management, energy management, water management and solid waste management (Box 3.6).

Colombia’s National Tourism Information System adopts a comprehensive set of indicators focusing on areas such as tourism seasonality, employment, economic benefits, and environmental impacts. The measures broadly align with international standards and guidelines required by UN Tourism’s International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO) initiative which now counts more than 40 active Observatories globally, and Colombia is exploring the development of additional data, tools, and indicators.

As part of Visit Finland’s Sustainable Travel Finland initiative, indicators providing data at business, regional and national level are built from the national sustainable tourism programme and certification scheme to provide visibility to the sustainability of tourism. It is intended that these indicators will help to evaluate and inform the development and implementation of the next tourism strategy (Box 3.3). Costa Rica has seven tourism sustainability indices (30 indicators) to assess the performance of regions with high tourism activity on the national Social Progress Index. Portugal leverages micro-data from the Tourism Companies 360º Initiative where tourism businesses report data on their environmental, social and governance performance, to better understand and design appropriate public policies for the different segments of tourist activity.

To inform tourism decision-making it is necessary to identify and address data gaps using relevant indicators. In Switzerland, a pilot framework of sustainability indicators seeks to combine environmental and social indicators with economic indicators from the TSA, in line with the SF-MST. The economic dimensions include gross value added (GVA) and employment while the environmental factors consider energy use and air emissions across tourism-related sectors. The social dimension will be included in the next cycle as data become available. New Zealand’s Sustainable Tourism Explorer identifies 109 measures across five pillars of sustainable tourism. However, data are currently only available for 54 of these measures with work ongoing to compile new data (Box 3.4).

Box 3.3. Creating evidence through the sustainable tourism programme in Finland

Visit Finland has developed the Sustainable Travel Finland (STF) programme for travel companies and regions in Finland. As a part of the programme, national indicators for sustainable tourism have been developed that provide tourism data at a company, regional and national level. In the future, these indicators will help to evaluate and develop target setting of the national tourism strategy and its actions. Indicators are drawn from the data collected from businesses as part of the sustainable tourism certification scheme. New reporting tools have been added to share these data and make them visible for the tourism sector and beyond. This also acts as an opportunity to motivate the sector to make more sustainable choices to achieve common goals. Indicators are compiled based on data collected from businesses, regions, visitor and resident surveys and Statistics Finland. They are structured across four dimensions:

• Destination management: for example, the number of tourism companies participating in the STF programme, share of the destination's residents satisfied with tourism’s impact on their place of residence.

• Economic value: for example, the number of education and training courses related to sustainable tourism, share of seasonal workers.

• Social and cultural impact: for example, the number of companies with multilingual communication, share of enterprises providing services from reduced mobility, proportion of companies providing services for the LGBTQ+ community.

• Environmental impact: for example, the share of companies measuring carbon footprint, share of companies actively participating in climate change mitigation measures.

To monitor and transparently communicate progress against the actions and indicators of the programme, Visit Finland published its first annual report State of Sustainable Tourism in May 2023, with the second edition published in June 2024. Based on the results, Visit Finland evaluates which indicators may need more ambitious thresholds, such as the share of companies actively supporting the protection, conservation and maintenance of local biodiversity, which decreased from 67% in 2022, to 41% in 2023 after more ambitious target setting. It also shows where the sector may need more support. The 2022 data indicated that only 27% of tourism businesses measured their carbon footprint. More awareness, competence building, and content was added, which saw the number of businesses measuring their carbon footprint increase to 49% in 2023.

To strengthen the evidence base for sustainable tourism development, Brazil has developed a set of 32 indicators linked to community-based tourism that contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. The set highlights initiatives, actions and investments designed to achieve progress, including through monitoring the number of free training courses offered to communities for qualification in the area of tourism services and products, the number of creative economy incentive programmes and the number of beds offered in accommodation facilities for community members. As socio-economic aspects interact closely with cultural and environmental factors, Brazil intends to measure environmental education for communities and the integration of natural and/or cultural attributes in tourism services and products.

Expert working groups provide an opportunity to address data gaps and create indicators in a collaborative way. In the Netherlands, a National Data Alliance has been created to support evidence-based decision making. The Alliance follows international developments for measuring SDGs and sustainable tourism indicators, and is also developing new indicators to evaluate the social and environmental impact of tourism including the carbon footprint associated with travel to and within the Netherlands.

In Australia, the Industry Data and Expert Analysis (IDEA) Working Group initiated four data and research projects including the Longitudinal Indicators for the Visitor Economy (LIVE) framework. The LIVE framework will be a set of leading and lagging progress indicators for the visitor economy, encompassing social, environmental and economic metrics.

Box 3.4. Developing the Sustainable Tourism Explorer in New Zealand

New Zealand’s Sustainable Tourism Explorer was developed by government, private sector and education sector working together. The process began in 2018 by comparing existing measures to the New Zealand Tourism Strategy, the Living Standards Framework and the UN SDGs. The goal was to balance scientific reliability, completeness, and the ongoing economic viability of the tracker while ensuring the Explorer worked well for the target audience.

The initiative identified 109 measures across five pillars of sustainable tourism including the environment, international and domestic visitors, the economy, New Zealanders and our communities and regions. Data are currently only available for 54 of these measures with ongoing work required to compile new data, including on waste management, cultural heritage protection, community attitudes towards tourism, as well as infrastructure investment for resource management and (sustainable) transportation at regional level.

New Zealand’s Government partnered with the private sector to improve data sharing across the sector and create and improve key data sets to better measure sustainable tourism impacts. Formal data sharing agreements, new information management systems and new digital infrastructure have been implemented, accompanied by capacity building to provide the skills to develop the systems. The Explorer requires further development, especially to make it easier to use and to fill data gaps.

Informing and evaluating policies and progress towards sustainable tourism

More work is needed to better align indicators with policy issues and build the capacity of policy and decision makers to access and use the information needed to take informed, evidence-based decisions. A recent review of the policy impact of indicator frameworks for sustainable tourism found existing sustainable tourism frameworks are focused on the indicators themselves and raising awareness for sustainable tourism and are less aligned with the policy outcomes (Miller and Torres-Delgado, 2023[18]). This could stem from the tendency for indicators to be defined by the available data rather than beginning with the policy intent. This calls for a shift beyond individual indicators and measures towards a user‑focused outcomes approach.

A strong policy perspective with an end user focus may help to better match available data to policy issues and identify priority data gaps to be addressed. This will help to ensure that measures are tailored and meaningful for destinations. Focusing on the priority actions required for change, may help to accelerate the transition to more sustainable models of tourism.

A one-size-fits-all measure or set of measures to monitor all aspects of tourism sustainability in a meaningful way for all destinations would likely include a significant number of indicators with many not relevant for all countries as many destinations face different issues. The experience and evidence from work to develop a common set of agreed indicators supports this, due to the complex nature of tourism and wide range of impacts generated. Focusing on a smaller set of core indicators targeted at a robust set of data that allows for international comparison and benchmarking against core sustainability challenges faced by countries may be a more fruitful approach, supplemented by a selection of indicators tailored to the strategic goals, policy needs and resources of an individual country or destination.

Understanding the policy process, context and goals can help to ensure that evidence is tailored to the needs of decision makers. Policy makers and other users need to be involved from the start and continually consulted throughout the process. This was a clear overarching message at the recent Workshop on Tourism Data Sharing, Integration and Governance organised by the OECD and European Commission. A further key message to emerge was that it is better to measure the right things well, than to try and measure everything.

Capacity and resource constraints continue to inhibit the ability of destinations to consistently develop and monitor data, or even to explore the potential of new and existing data sources from the beginning. Understanding the policy objectives and the measures necessary for decision making, including the granularity and timeliness of the data required, makes it possible to prioritise the set of data to expand and contract based on the resources available. This can also be enabled by understanding and employing the appropriate measurement frameworks.

Addressing policy priorities to promote sustainable tourism

Tourism strategies set out long-term visions to guide sustainable development and provide a good foundation for defining the optimal operating model for tourism. However, understanding what sustainability means for an individual country or destination, and correctly defining the core sustainability priorities and concrete actions to address them is an area where more work is needed.

Beyond national strategies, countries are also prioritising initiatives on several core sustainability issues. It is these priorities or issues that could be used to understand more concretely what is required to create a more sustainable tourism model. An analysis of priority tourism sustainability issues provided in response to a survey of OECD member and partner countries revealed ten common issues:

• Acceptance and inclusion: Tourism provides an opportunity for people to experience new cultures and ways of life. Ensuring that destinations and businesses are capable and willing to create an inclusive environment for both workers and visitors (e.g. gender, ethnicity, accessibility needs), can promote economic and social benefits.

• Biodiversity: The natural environment remains a key attraction for tourists, but is also impacted by tourism. Reducing the negative impacts of tourism on biodiversity will contribute to ecosystem stability, help build resilience to climate change, contribute to human health and extend the longevity of natural attractions.

• Circular economy: Tourism activities generate significant pollution and waste. The increased uptake of circularity principles within tourism can help to reduce waste and pollution, having positive impacts on both the environment and the economy.

• Community and visitor sentiment: Local communities often receive the benefits from tourism, but also deal with negative impacts of tourism. Ensuring that local communities are involved in the planning process for tourism can help to improve local acceptance and the experience for visitors, positively impacting both social and economic factors.

• Decarbonisation of transport: Tourism is built on the movement of people. Reducing the environmental impact of transport through the development of sustainable aviation fuels and the increased use of public transport and ‘soft mobility’ options can help to reduce the carbon emissions.

• Digitalisation: As in every ecosystem of our economy and our society, digitalisation impacts and transforms tourism (European Commission, 2021[19]). Digital tools for businesses and visitors can help drive productivity and satisfaction, while providing new forms of data and evidence for decision-making.

• Resilience to shocks: Shocks, including natural and physical disaster, are expected to become more frequent. To maintain sustainable growth, the tourism sector must minimise the impact of these shocks and build back stronger. Increased resilience can provide stability and improve economic and social benefits of tourism.

• Tourism concentration: Destinations are often reliant on both spatial and temporal peaks in tourism. Dispersing tourists to different locations and spreading the tourism season to include shoulder periods can increase the economic benefits while reducing the impact of peak seasons on the community and the environment. Other interventions, such as improving the available infrastructure in a destination, also impact the capacity of a destination to manage visitor flows.

• Tourism workforce: As a service sector, tourism is driven by its workforce. Ensuring the tourism sector provides fair and decent work, and helping increase the social, green and digital skills can help to improve the lives of local populations as well as economic benefits.

• Tourist behaviours: The impact of tourism is not solely based on numbers, but also on the spatial context tourism takes places in and the way tourists behave. Understanding tourist behaviour and facilitating tourists to make more sustainable choices can have environmental, social and economic benefits.

These issues differ across destinations and should continue to be assessed as not all need to be addressed at the same time or with the same intensity. For example, destinations reliant on coastal tourism are more likely to consider issues like water quality and biodiversity, while island and long-haul destinations identify the need to decarbonise transport. However, several issues are also common across destinations, including seasonality, the spatial dispersal of visitors to less visited areas and the impact of visitors on communities and the natural environment. Table 3.2 provides a breakdown of the priorities by responding country. Work has already begun to address many of these issues through the implementation of new policies and programmes and can provide opportunities for new learning.

Table 3.2. Priority tourism sustainability issues identified by OECD member and partner countries

Key sustainability issues identified	Identifying countries
Acceptance and inclusion	Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, Romania
Biodiversity	Australia, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Peru, Poland, Slovenia
Circular economy	Austria, Brazil, Czechia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Malta, Peru, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, United States
Community and visitor sentiment	Australia, Austria, Czechia, France, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania, Sweden
Decarbonisation of transport	Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, New Zealand, Peru, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye
Digitalisation	Costa Rica, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Türkiye
Resilience to shocks	Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Greece, United States
Tourism concentration	Austria, Brazil, Czech Republic, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, Türkiye, United Kingdom
Tourism workforce	Australia, Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland
Tourist behaviours	Australia, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Switzerland

Source: OECD country survey.

Strengthening the evidence base for tourism decision-making

Targeted and meaningful policy actions require a strategic approach to developing indicators, tools, and metrics to provide the evidence base for sustainable tourism development and management. Combining the substantial bottom-up analysis of available data with a top-down approach that considers the policy priorities and intent can help to ensure the measures are both available and meaningful at the destination. This integrated, policy-led approach can ensure that indicators are tailored to inform decision making, while implementing targets, thresholds and key performance indicators can help to assess the effectiveness of policy efforts and provide the sector with tangible goals.

Significant work has been undertaken to understand the potential of existing data to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism, but data gaps still remain. Building on existing work there are opportunities to identify new data sources and products to address these gaps and enable evidence-based policy making, especially by harnessing data created by the digital transition.

Collaborative approaches to tourism policy development could also create new opportunities for data sharing between the public and private sectors, while building the capacity of decision makers to better understand tourism data, including its limitations.

Assessing, selecting, and implementing indicators for sustainable tourism policy

Well-designed indicators can support the development of targeted and effective policies promoting the sustainable development of tourism. These indicators should be reliable, timely and consistent, to inform tourism development and management decisions and monitor progress in delivering sustainable outcomes. There are advantages to focusing, at least initially, on a limited set of practical and achievable indicators which respond to specific policy priorities, bringing focus to the necessary policy requirements within the constraints of often limited resources.

Countries which are well advanced in developing and implementing indicators monitoring the sustainability of tourism have commonly worked closely with policy makers and data professionals from across all levels of government, as well as other relevant actors from the private sector, academia and local communities. This participative approach acknowledges that the process of selecting and agreeing indicators can play an important role in mobilising actors around a common goal and help build capacity to successful implement and use the indicators. It can also help to embed indicators into the policy cycle, form a shared vision and contribute to improved policy coherence.

Under the Plan T - Master Plan for Tourism Austria designed a set of indicators based on data criteria related to availability, timeliness, practicability, and continuity. An initial list of indicators was narrowed down to a short-list of 26 using a working group of experts in data, tourism, and science. A final round of consultation and analysis resulted in a final list of 12 indicators, which are reviewed regularly, with 14 indicators now used (Box 3.5). Similarly, New Zealand’s Sustainable Tourism Explorer was developed through a collaborative process with the New Zealand Government adopting a stewardship role in the process (Box 3.4).

Such participative approaches provide an opportunity for the tourism community to work together to define the policy issue, assess available and possible data sources and develop an appropriate measure. The process can have a value beyond the indicator set itself, and result in increased knowledge about the issues from different perspectives and thinking of others. It can also act as a capacity building exercise for the indicator compilers and policy makers as end users to learn about the data and associated challenges and limitations. Furthermore, it can lay the foundation for improved future collaborative actions moving forward (UNEP, 2015[20]).

Collaborative processes help to ensure the indicators are tailored to the needs of policy makers and creates the buy-in and ownership needed to implement and use the indicators. This in turn helps to increase the longevity of the indicators, as well as provide additional data context for the users. This process can also help to improve the data available. For example, in addition to identifying core tourism indicators, Australia’s Industry Data and Expert Analysis Working Group was tasked with identifying and making suggestions to improve data collection methods for the identified metrics.

Box 3.5. Monitoring and driving sustainable tourism development in Austria

Under the Plan T – Master Plan for Tourism, Austria has developed a core set of indicators, considering the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. The indicators were selected through a multi-stakeholder consultation process and are continuously being developed to adapt to changing circumstances and include:

• Tourist arrivals and overnight stays, expenditure, GVA, employment data available from TSA.

• Competitiveness in prices.

• Revenue per available room and fictitious debt repayment period from the Austrian Bank for Tourism Development.

• Share of renewable source of energy in gastronomy and accommodation from Statistics Austria; energy consumption in key tourism sectors.

• Guest satisfaction which is available through the T-MONA guest survey.

• Resident attitude towards tourism/tourism acceptance.

• Number of businesses and destinations certified with the Austrian Eco-label.

The set of indicators is part of Austria’s holistic approach to monitor and enact progress on sustainable tourism development at national, regional, destination and enterprise level, which also includes:

• Following a pilot project on Regional Information and Monitoring Systems in two tourism regions, a new publicly accessible dashboard will be launched in the first half of 2024. It is a continuous observation and management tool, also for tourism stakeholders, containing regional data (30 base indicators), ranging from the number of visitors and enterprises to labour market, mobility and environmental data.

• Austrian eco-label for destinations based on evaluation criteria regarding management, socio-economic impact, environmental protection, mobility and culture.

• ESG Data Hub provides nine tourism-specific indicators enabling enterprises to report and access ESG key performance data, aiming to facilitate access to finance and funding and catalyse the fundamental role of the private sector to advance sustainability.

• Quarterly surveys on tourism acceptance of the Austrian resident people implemented at national level which are legally based on the tourism demand and acceptance statistics regulation. As the survey on tourism acceptance is carried out as part of the existing survey on travel behaviour, synergy effects can be achieved both in terms of content and resources. The survey started with the first reference quarter 2024. The ongoing compilation of acceptance statistics aims to record the perceived effects of tourism to provide a holistic picture of the population's attitude towards the phenomenon of tourism and to monitor the development in the long term.

Indicators and evidence used to develop and monitor sustainable tourism policies should continue to be revised and updated to address the priority issues over time. As sustainability practices and data availability evolve, so too should the indicators. This does not only mean adding indicators, but also considering which of the existing indicators are still relevant or should be removed.

Understanding the policy context, and the right level to measure plays a key role in identifying and developing the right indicators for decision making. Focusing only on national and regional level initiatives could lead to the omission of some wider global sustainability issues that need to be addressed at international level (e.g. international aviation). Initiatives like the OECD Database on Air Transport CO₂ Emissions, which contain domestic and international aviation data (passenger and freight flights) for 186 countries and is suitable for both the territorial and the residence approach within the SEEA accounting framework, could help to better monitor emissions from air transport in a complementary and comparable way (OECD, 2023[21]).

Developing tools and metrics to monitor progress

Indicators and data points need to be considered in context to be meaningful and useful. This highlights the importance of adopting targets for indicators, to enable policy makers to monitor whether tourism destinations are moving towards or away from the desired outcome of sustainable developments (Miller and Torres-Delgado, 2023[18]). Sharing evidence such as targets, thresholds, and progress at the national and sub-national level (e.g. through online hubs and dashboards), can help to inform tourism policy and business decision-making and make sustainable development and its benefits, more tangible.

Targets for sustainable tourism measures will vary based on the different context of individual tourism destinations, national, subnational and local, and consider the specific needs or appropriate thresholds for each measure. Determining the appropriate threshold is complex and not static. However, understanding the desired direction the measure should move is a positive start. Providing this context can help decision makers to track progress toward the desired outcome and evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programmes.

While sustainability is more and more mainstreamed in national and subnational tourism strategies and plans in many countries, the targets and key performance indicators set out in these strategies and plans are still typically focused on economic measures (Box 3.1). To engrain sustainable principles in tourism development, there is a need to set out goals and targets in these strategies that encompass all facets of sustainability, looking beyond the historical targets for tourism arrivals and expenditure and focus on the specific needs of the country or destination.

Box 3.6. Setting strategic goals for sustainable tourism development in Portugal

The Tourism Strategy 2027 framed sustainability at the core of tourism policies in Portugal under the vision Tourism as a hub for economic, social and environmental development throughout the territory. The Strategy sets eight strategic goals or targets across the three pillars of sustainability which include:

• Reduce the seasonality index from 36.3% to 33.5% by 2027 (social).

• Double the number of educational qualifications from 30% to 60% (social).

• More than 90% of the resident population consider the impact of tourism on their territory to be positive (social).

• More than 90% of companies adopt energy efficiency measures (environmental).

• More than 90% of companies promote efficient water use in their operations (environmental).

• More than 90% of companies develop efficient waste management actions (environmental).

• Increase overnight stays in Portugal to 80 million in 2027 (economic).

• Increase tourism revenue to EUR 27 billion by 2027 (economic).

This is in addition to the goals for 2023 included in the plan for setting up Regional Tourism Observatories in each of the 7 regional DMOs, in partnership with UN Tourism and its INSTO network, bringing universities and knowledge centres closer to destination management entities.

This is the approach adopted under Portugal’s Tourism Strategy 2027, which aims to establish tourism as a hub for economic, social and environmental development throughout the territory, positioning Portugal as one of the most competitive and sustainable tourism destinations in the world. The Strategy incorporates targets across the social, environmental, and economic pillars and puts businesses at the heart of sustainable development (Box 3.6).

Norway’s National Tourism Strategy 2030 has an overall goal of “big impact, small footprint” for tourism. The main goals of the Strategy are to enhance value creation and jobs, to help Norway transition to a low-emission society, to help make communities attractive with happy residents and to deliver outstanding customer service to encourage repeat visitation and greater tourist spending. To support these goals, the Strategy commits to a 50% reduction of carbon emissions by 2030 and to reduce annual transport emissions by 10% in addition to revenue and employment targets. Among the initiatives and measures to reach the strategic goals, Norway aims to develop Klimasmart, a market development calculator that relates tourist spending to carbon emissions to prioritise low-carbon markets with high spending.

The Slovenian Tourism Strategy 2022-28 looks to set Slovenia as a role model for smart destinations that strengthen and encourage the development of sustainable, boutique, personalised and innovative experiences. To reach a balanced growth model for tourism which focuses on accelerated growth in quality and value add, Slovenia has established 25 impact metrics, each with their own quantitative targets based on a 2019 baseline (Box 3.7).

Box 3.7. Target setting in Slovenia’s Tourism Strategy 2022-28

The Slovenian Tourism Strategy 2022-28 defines 14 key impact indicators (25 metrics in total). Building on 2019 baseline data, Slovenia has defined quantitative goals to reach by 2028 for each of the 25 metrics. The target values have been established based on the projected tourism development in Slovenia under a scenario of "A little bit more and a lot better”, which emphasises moderate quantitative growth while prioritising enhancements in quality and value added under the motto Across the five objectives, Slovenia for instance aims to:

• Increase the total value added in the core tourism industry from EUR 0.9 billion euros in 2019 to EUR 1.3 billion in 2028 (business and financial aspect).

• Increase the length of stay by 20% (business and financial aspect).

• Improve the average satisfaction of the population with the development of tourism in the destinations included in the Green Scheme from an average score of 3.6 to 4.3 on a scale from 1 to 5 (Societal aspect).

• Increase the number of jobs generated by tourism demand (economic aspect).

• Reduce the Slovenian tourist industry’s annual total carbon footprint by at least 1% (environmental and climate aspect).

• Increase the budgets of all destination management boards by 50% (management aspect).

The performance indicators are monitored annually to track progress against the five strategic objectives of the strategy. Indicator compilation relies on multiple data sources including from the Green Scheme managed by the Slovenian Tourist Board, the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, the Bank of Slovenia and the Slovenian Business Register.

Thresholds are another tool to monitor performance. However, some thresholds may not be quantifiable and may need a more qualitative approach. Overcrowding in destinations has led to an increased focus on understanding the carrying capacity of destinations. Better evidence is needed to anticipate when tourism in a destination is approaching the saturation point and identify effective countermeasures to rebalance the impacts and trade-offs, so the benefits outweigh the costs for host communities, businesses, the environment, and tourists.

Understanding destinations’ capacities and determining critical thresholds is increasingly important to manage the trade-offs and pressures that tourism brings on infrastructure, the environment, and the host community. Destination carrying capacity is not a new concept but is the focus of renewed attention as destinations struggle with the impacts from the strong rebound in tourism flows. A recent study suggests that carrying capacity is a fluid concept that cannot be represented by a specific number and that indicators alone may not provide appropriate statements about carrying capacity (ESPON, 2020[22]). It also noted that there was no single way to take specific territorial characteristics of tourist destinations into account when assessing carrying capacity so guidelines needed to be adaptable, while innovative data and visualisations of tourist flows can capture the full picture of local tourism dynamics.

Benchmarking progress within and across countries is often considered a way to monitor progress, providing a common reference point. At European level, the EU Tourism Dashboard provides opportunities for countries and regions to benchmark their progress across 19 common measures and a set of 13 basic descriptors. Where applicable, targets are displayed for measures as well as the positive directional change for data points. These measures are provided in an open-source, online tool that provides a data visualisation at the most granular level possible, both nationally and regionally.

Contextual factors need to be taken into consideration for meaningful benchmarking and target setting. A landlocked, central destination like Switzerland could not meaningfully compare total transport emissions with a remote island destination like New Zealand, or even Malta. In Spain, the four regions of Andalusia, Catalonia, Navarra and the Region of Valencia have developed and piloted a draft set of sustainability indicators, supported by the OECD under the EU-funded Technical Support Instrument. The aim is to compare sustainability performance across all Spanish regions building on common data sources. However, the project has highlighted that direct comparisons can be of limited informative value for regions with different visitor volumes, different types of tourism activity, different geographical characteristics, and different infrastructure. While benchmarking against comparable countries or regions provides opportunities to identify good practice examples and targets, monitoring development over time within one region or country can also be a valuable approach to progress towards sustainable tourism development.

Making data available to inform policy, destination management and business decisions is important to make progress and mobilise further action. The impacts of the pandemic illustrated the importance of having readily available information for decision making, with online dashboards and tools for tourism data and statistics becoming increasingly more available at the international, national and sub-national levels. Slovenia introduced a Daily tourism flows in Slovenia dashboard with published daily data on tourist arrivals and overnight stays in the current year with a three-day delay. The data are published as experimental, as they are subject to change, and do not match official monthly data, but they do provide a timely indication of changing tourism performance.

Addressing sustainability data gaps through traditional methods

Policy and decision makers take decisions based on the data available, which may not be sufficiently robust, timely and relevant to fully understand and address the issue at hand. This can lead to sub-optimal decisions and poorly targeted programmes and actions. Moreover, indicators are only of value when data exists to measure them. Addressing data gaps by focusing of the policy priorities and making the evidence available can support efforts to shift towards a more balanced approach to tourism development and inform decisions considering the trade-offs, economic externalities and interconnectedness of policy issues.

Economic measures are now well established for the tourism sector, but key sustainable tourism policy priorities still lack the data required to enable evidence-based decision-making (e.g. acceptance and inclusion, biodiversity, the circular economy, community and visitor sentiment, the decarbonisation of transport and digitalisation). Existing official suffice for the creation of national long-term strategic plans, but more work is required.

Combining different data sources can help enable evidence-based tourism policies. A general issue of the tourism sector is that it is a fragmented sector with many actors having access to limited data connected to their own operations. Within the Austrian National Tourism Data Space several use cases were developed to help address this (e.g. energy consumption and mobility). The vision is to rethink the guest experiences and create new business models, better services, seamless experiences as well as to use data for scenario planning (visitor management, seasonal and timely disparity). Through the data space, stakeholders in tourism can use data from various sources including gastronomy, accommodation, mobility, weather, mobile phone companies. It has been developed as a platform for relevant data, applications and visualisations.

The European Commission is working towards developing a common European Tourism Data Space which will provide an opportunity for tourism businesses and public authorities to share data creating opportunities to fill existing data gaps and encourage innovation across the tourism sector.

Countries are also exploring ways to fill the gap in environmental data by linking the TSA to the SEEA. Germany first developed and implemented a comprehensive methodology to link the TSA and SEEA in 2017 which has been integrated into a Tourism Satellite Account–Economy and Environment (TSA-EE). This provides data on the economic impact of the tourism sector as well as tourism-related energy consumption, air emissions, raw material input and the environmental protection expenditure in Germany. This work this has become an area of experimentation for countries with robust TSA and SEEA, data sets including Canada, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and the United States. UN Tourism developed a technical note for linking the TSA and SEEA in 2018 (UN Tourism, 2018[23]).

In 2023, Croatia developed a methodology to link the TSA and SEEA as part of a comprehensive tourism reform agenda. However, it was found that significant challenges still remained to estimate environmental measures with the existing data, particularly for water flows and solid waste. To address these gaps in the implementation of their Tourism Sustainable Satellite Account, Croatia is undertaking a series of ten bespoke surveys to increase data availability at the national and regional level (Box 3.8). Italy has used a similar approach to derive estimates for the energy and air emissions related to tourism. However, this is only possible from the production perspective and as such misses key consumption inputs like the quantity of fuel used by tourists travelling by car (owned or rented).

The linking of the TSA and the SEEA requires a complex statistical methodology and robust granular data that is not available for all countries or destinations. The use of proxies, while not the complete picture, can help to provide an indication of the environmental progress in the sector. For example, Türkiye has developed a web-based reporting system to monitor and manage the water and energy consumption, waste volume, carbon footprint, and greenhouse gas emission data of accommodation facilities as part of the National Sustainable Tourism Programme. In Norway, CO2rism provides a tool to calculate the CO₂ emissions generated by the transport of tourists to and around Norway.

Countries have been taking steps to better understand the impacts of tourism on local residents and their communities. Resident sentiment and satisfaction surveys are one way to understand the impacts on the local population. Iceland collects survey statistics on the satisfaction of the local residents. Austria recently introduced a new survey that will be issued annually to better understand the impacts of tourism on the local populations.

Spain has implemented an online panel survey with the main goals to develop a simple to understand, easy to implement tourism acceptance/rejection indicator for destinations. The main questions include “On a scale of 1 to 5, in your opinion, how do you think tourism affects your local community?” and “On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you think tourism in your town affects you personally?”. This allows Spain to capture both the personal impact and the community impact.

Box 3.8. Using national accounts data to estimate environmental impact of tourism in Croatia

Croatia’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan set out a comprehensive reform agenda to promote sustainable tourism planning and development. As part of this ambitious agenda, Croatia undertook work to assess the feasibility of creating a Tourism Sustainable Satellite Account by linking the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) and System for Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) national accounts frameworks. This looks to improve the measurement of the economic and environmental impacts of tourism by providing data related to energy consumption, carbon emissions, water usage and waste production in the tourism sector.

As a foundational principle this methodology utilises the economic share of the tourism sector as calculated in the TSA and applies these proportions to the environmental impact measures available in the SEEA at the sub-sectoral level to estimate the environmental impact of tourism activity. The feasibility study found that the implementation of this approach was possible for air emissions and energy usage at the national level as sufficiently granular data is available from the Croatian SEEA (at two-digit NACE level). Similarly, tourism-induced greenhouse gas emissions, tourism-related pollutant emissions, and tourism-related energy consumption could be calculated, in both absolute terms and intensity. However, indicators related to water consumption, waste generation and environmental protection expenditure require additional data sources.

Croatia will look to extend the Tourism Sustainable Satellite Account methodology to the regional level, with emphasis on the NUTS 3 regions of Adriatic Croatia. The methodology will be extended to include societal data for 10 selected destinations.

Slovenia introduced a survey to measure the local population’s satisfaction with tourism as part of the Green Scheme of Slovenian Tourism. As a condition for obtaining the Slovenia Green Destination label, destinations carry out the survey, reflecting the need for granular measurement at sub-national level to respond to needs of the local population. Under the Green Scheme, Slovenia monitors largely qualitative indicators related to destination management, the nature and landscape, environment and climate, culture and tradition, social climate and tourism business operations and communication.

Harnessing the potential of new and alternative data

Official measures based on well-established approaches provide a robust and comparable set of data but can lack the granularity and timeliness required. Countries and the private sector have been exploring the opportunities being presented by new data sources. Data from private sources such as bank and credit card companies or mobile network operators provide new opportunities to monitor the performance and impact of tourism, while administrative data sources also open up new possibilities.

New data sources can help to monitor elements of tourism that have been traditionally difficult to capture, such as events, without the use of surveys which have a widening cost/effectiveness gap. Mobile phone data for example can help to understand the movement patterns of visitors between attractions and accommodation allowing policy makers to take appropriate measures such as adding public transport or soft mobility options. Utilising smart meters in tourism accommodation can provide timely insights in the energy usage of tourists.

Using a combination of these new sources can better equip decision makers to understand not only the economic impacts of tourism but also the social and environmental impacts. This can help consider how to best balance the trade-offs required to make tourism more sustainable. Countries are increasingly moving in the direction to integrate new data sources into the tourism information system, including to strengthen official tourism statistics.

In New Zealand, for example, a pilot is being undertaken to assess how the quality of soundscapes can be monitored by combining data from Global Navigation Satellite System tracking units on the movement of boats and aircraft with sound-modelling software on how sound travels in air and water. Malta meanwhile is using a combination of satellite imaging an artificial technology to map tourism development and monitor the environmental impact. This work is supporting the vision set out in Malta’s Tourism Strategy 2021-30 Recover, Rethink, Revitalise and feeding into the development of a set of tailored indicators measuring and monitoring the sustainability of tourism in the country (Box 3.9).

The use of new data sources like geospatial data (e.g. mobile positioning or satellite imagery) provide opportunities to effectively map visitors flows. For example, Lithuania have implemented heat maps using mobile positioning data to show the number of visitors at tourism sites. This heat map is publicly available to help those who make decisions based on tourist activity in the area (e.g. tourism service providers) or those who are involved in planning the development of tourist facilities or infrastructure renewal (e.g. local governments). Countries including Australia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Czechia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom are exploring mobile positioning data within tourism measurement.

Switzerland used rail ticket data to estimate tourism flows between Swiss cantons which allowed for improved measurement of the regional variation and better inform the local stakeholders. Using this kind of data for estimating tourism flows relies on a large share of tourists using public transport compared to other means of transport, such as cars. Italy is analysing social media data to provide insights into tourists’ perceptions, preferences, and experiences while helping to understand the socio-cultural impacts and identifying areas for improvement.

There is also a demand for predictive data concerning future travel. This could allow countries and destinations to plan resources, such as public transport, according to future demand. Countries like Hungary, Italy and Portugal are using internet search analytics for their country or regions to estimate future demand.

Box 3.9. Using advanced satellite data to monitor tourism trends and impacts in Malta

With a strong rebound of tourism in Malta following the pandemic, the country aims to monitor the impacts of tourism across the country in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. To support the vision set out in Malta’s Tourism Strategy 2021-30 Recover, Rethink, Revitalise, Malta is developing a set of sustainability indicators to be monitored by the Malta Tourism Authority and its Observatory. The initiative allows the Ministry for Tourism of Malta to understand and monitor the dynamics and trends of tourism, but also to support the monitoring and implementation of Malta’s medium- and long-term tourism strategy.

Malta is incorporating satellite data collected in an interactive dashboard to monitor the environmental impact of tourism in the country. The twelve indicators cover vegetation health, nature and urban green extent, agricultural potential, forest health, water quality (chlorophyll, turbidity, salinity, temperature), urbanisation evolution and its proximity to cultural or natural heritage as well as city air quality. This initiative is a collaboration between Malta Tourism Authority and the tech company Murmuration.

Malta has recognised the use of technologically advanced satellite data as a new innovative addition to the more traditional set of indicators, and the benefits of combining different tools and data sources to inform decision making. The technology has sufficient resolution to understand local differences on a small territory such as the Maltese islands and allows for an assessment of the environmental impact of tourism developments in both residential and natural areas.

New data sources open a wide range of new opportunities to better understand and monitor the impacts of tourism and to evaluate the effectiveness of tourism policies and programmes. However, it is important to use these sources with caution, understanding the current limitations including issues with data quality, coverage, comparability and representativeness as well as issues related to cost and data privacy laws. For example, social media users might not be representative of the entire tourist population, meaning that the social media listening might not represent the true sentiment of tourists or those who search, might not travel. Issues still remain in the definition of tourists within new data sets such as transactions and mobile positioning data. These sources should be used in conjunction with official statistics and continue to be explored as more data becomes available.

Building data literacy and capacity for evidence-based decision making in tourism

In formulating robust and sustainable tourism policies, tourism policy makers increasingly recognise the important role of data-driven approaches in decision-making processes. Understanding the data available is important, and data literacy allows policy makers to critically evaluate the reliability, relevance, and limitations of the information at hand. This enables policy makers to make informed judgements and anticipate potential consequences of policy interventions while also conveying the rationale behind these decisions, articulating the benefits of proposed interventions and to creating greater stakeholder buy-in.

Understanding both the opportunities and limitations of the available data is essential for decision makers. Recognising the capabilities of the data in terms of its coverage, timeliness and relevance to their objectives can help to ensure that decisions are based on sound evidence. At the same time, awareness of the data limitations, including biases and gaps in coverage could help to ensure core issues are addressed in the decision-making process. While there is a growing acceptance of the importance of data and analytical capabilities for decision making, translating this to the tourism environment comes with additional complexities. In Korea, the demand for data literacy training has been increasing as analysis and data services have become more available, especially with the launch of the Korea Tourism Data Lab (Box 3.10). The Korea Tourism Data Lab provided 13 training programmes to 220 novice users in 2023.

Box 3.10. Building tourism data capacity in Korea

Korea Tourism Data Lab provides official statistics including the Korea Tourism Statistics and the Foreign Tourist Survey, as well as tourism big data. Korea see big data is a complementary tool to official statistics and encourage users to see the tourism trends through big data rather than official figures due to the level of timeliness. Several initiatives have been undertaken to improve the usage of the Data Lab and showcase the possibilities of the available tourism data.

The Korea Tourism Data Lab Best Use Case Contest is held annually to identify how Korea Tourism Data Lab is being used to solve real business problems. In 2023, a total of 53 teams participated, with a tourist start-up Nolowa Gurye using the Data Lab to developed tour programmes in seven regions by analysing popular tourist destinations and major attraction factors.

To complement the Data Lab, Korea provides customised support for tourism companies with high growth potential to establish marketing strategies by integrating the data from the Data Lab with company data. In 2023, 15 companies were supported.

User surveys are conducted regularly to understand user needs for new data and analysis services, with customised services for data analysis training offered for users from for beginners to those with advanced technical skills.

Developing the ability to understand and effectively communicate evidence requires dedicated resources, training and capacity building. Access to data, analytical tools and expertise is essential for policy makers to navigate the complexities of evidence-based decision making. Continuous training programmes and capacity building initiatives play an important role in enhancing the data literacy of policy makers. In their communication of their mobility data and tourism dashboards, Lithuania provided training sessions of up to two hours to introduce the dashboards, and participants were asked to try to find the relevant data themselves. In Austria, insufficient data competences were noted as one of the main problems for launching the National Tourism Data Space and as such the Data Stewards Network was launched. This issue was addressed through several training sessions, and they are now advocating a “learning by doing” approach complemented by discussions of the common challenges.

Collaboration and communication between policy makers and statisticians, or others working closely with the data, is important for evidence-based decision making. Policy makers rely on statisticians and data experts to provide accurate, reliable and timely data to inform their decision-making processes. Conversely, statisticians require an understanding of policy objectives and priorities to tailor data collection, analysis and report to meet the needs of policy makers. By fostering collaboration and communication between these two groups, policy decisions can be based on robust evidence, while data-driven insights are effectively translated into actionable policies.

Policy considerations to improve the evidence base for sustainable tourism

Optimising the strength and quality of the tourism sector involves shifting to more sustainable practices while addressing structural weaknesses that have impeded the sector in the past. This includes issues linked with seasonality, economic leakage, overdependence and overcrowding, job quality and career prospects. At the same time, actions are needed to accelerate the green tourism transition and ensure that the sector is fully able to benefit from opportunities presented by the digital transition.

Sustainability is now being mainstreamed into tourism strategies, but this needs to be supported by effective policies and implementation structures to develop and manage tourism sustainably, across all levels of government. Delivering on this sustainable tourism agenda requires the development and implementation of policies and programmes that are evidence-based and informed by relevant data. Countries require robust and timely data that is sufficiently disaggregated and comparable to inform the tourism planning, policy and decision-making process. Data is also needed to determine the desired type and scale of tourism appropriate for individual destinations.

Policy considerations to improve the evidence base for sustainable tourism development, include:

• Considering a policy-led approach to identifying indicators will support evidence-based policies. Starting with the key policy questions then analysing the data availability and gaps that need to be closed to answer these questions allows for destinations and decision makers to target resources towards prioritised issues. This integrated approach can help to minimise the number of indicators to a core set that can have the greatest impact and deliver the desired outcomes. Understanding the policy goals can also help to ensure that the data selected measures and monitors the issues, understanding the complex and interconnected nature of the tourism sector, and helping to balance the trade-offs required in the policy making process.

• Addressing the data gaps in the measurement of priority issues for sustainable tourism development. Tourism data has traditionally focused on the economic impacts of the sector. This has put an emphasis on the economic development, sometimes at the expense of the environment and local communities. Exploring new opportunities to monitor and measure actions related to the environmental and social issues within the sector could help to accelerate the transition to more sustainable models of tourism. This includes also considering the role of new data beyond the traditional statistical survey measures while taking into account the potential limitations of such sources.

• Designing a tailored toolkit of indicators, tools and metrics to facilitate evidence-based decision making. Building on the significant body of existing work on sustainable tourism indicators with new methods being presented by the digital transition can help to align short term actions with long-term strategic goals. Different types of data and tools have different purposes and should be utilised to benefit decision makers. Bringing together robust and internationally comparable data with more targeted, timely and granular measures provides opportunities to create tailored plans for local and regional destinations that align with national and international goals. Measures within the toolkit should be regularly reviewed and assessed to ensure they meet the policy need.

• Fostering collaborative approaches in the process of designing tools and metrics for the monitoring of tourism. Bringing both data experts and decision makers together to develop the evidence base for sustainable tourism development can have lasting benefits. Incorporating the policy maker early can allow for more targeted tools that meet the needs of the decision maker, create buy-in for the product, which can help for resources, and builds the capacity of both the policy maker and the data professional. Creating diverse collaboration structures through the development phase, with input from decision makers at all levels, including the private sector, can uncover new sources of information and ensure tools adapted to consider the changing needs of different destinations.

• Develop the data literacy of decision makers. Even the best designed tool to measure and monitor sustainable tourism development will be ineffective if decision makers are not able to use it. While collaboration between data and policy experts is necessary to design and implement new data tools and metrics, decision makers (in both policy and the private sector) need to be able to fully digest and utilise these tools to make the right decisions. Increasing the data literacy of decision makers and ensuring that new data initiatives and tools have the appropriate levels of training to understand both the potential and the barriers can help to support more sound policy and business decisions.

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Annex 1.A. International sustainable tourism frameworks

Table A.1. International sustainable tourism frameworks

Indicator framework	Year	Type	Pillars/dimensions	Number of indicators
Tourism Specific Frameworks
European Environmental Agency - Tourism and Environment Reporting Mechanism [Link]	2013	Reporting mechanism	Focus is on tourism and the environment	19 indicators (within 10 topics)
European Commission: European Tourism Indicators System [Link]	2016	Toolkit for sustainable destination management	1. Destination management 2. Social and cultural impact 3. Economic value 4. Environmental impact	43 core, 13 supplementary
European Commission: EU Tourism Dashboard [Link]	2023	Indicator dashboard	1. Environmental impact 2. Digitalisation 3. Socio-economic vulnerability	19 indicators, 13 basic descriptors
Eurostat - Methodological work on measuring the sustainable development of tourism [Link]	2006	Technical report	1. Environment (main focus) 2. Economic 3. Social	20 indicators
Eurostat - Indicators on sustainability of tourism - Working Group on Tourism Statistics [Link]	2006	Draft indicators for debate	1. Economy (monetary, volume/flows) 2. Labour market 3. Social & cultural 4. Environmental 5. Digitalisation	29 indicators, 11 to be further explored
OECD Indicators for the Integration of Environmental and Sustainability Concerns into Tourism Policies [Link]	2003	Discussion/guidance document	1. Tourism trends and patterns of environmental and social significance 2. Interactions between tourism, environment and social conditions 3. Economic linkages and policy aspects	80 indicators
OECD Indicators for Measuring Competitiveness in Tourism [Link]	2013	Guidance document	1. Tourism performance and impacts 2. Delivering quality and competitive tourism services 3. Attractiveness of destination 4. Policy responses and economic opportunities	11 core indicators, 5 supplementary and 4 for future development
OECD Tourism Paper - Supporting Quality Jobs in Tourism [Link]	2015	Policy paper	Indicators are all either economic or economic/social	11 indicators
OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2022: Initial ideas for tourism resilience indicators [Link]	2022	Indicator ideas/proposals	1. Social 2. Economic 3. Environment 4. Institutional	29 indicators
Indicator framework	Year	Type	Pillars/dimensions	Number of indicators
UN Tourism 2004: Indicators of Sustainable Development for Tourism Destinations A Guidebook [Link]	2004	Guidance document	Split by issues (e.g. sewage treatment, employment, etc. The issues can be divided into economic, social and environmental	Over 700 indicators
UN Tourism and JICA Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through Tourism – Toolkit of Indicators for Projects [Link]	2023	Toolkit to measure impact of tourism projects	1. Economic 2. Social 3. Environmental All indicators are linked to the SDG framework (the 17 goals and 169 targets) and a table translating between themes/dimensions and SDGs	Around 500 indicators (3-20 indicators for each of the 104 targets covered)
UN Tourism Statistical Framework for Measuring Sustainable Tourism (SF-MST) [Link]	2024	Statistical framework	1. Economic 2. Environmental 3. Social
World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Development Index [Link]	2022	Strategic benchmarking tool (index)	1. Environmental Sustainability 2. Socioeconomic Resilience and Conditions 3. Travel and Tourism Demand Pressure and Impact	29 indicators
World Travel and Tourism Council Environmental and Social Reporting [Link]	2023	Reporting mechanism	Environmental and social reporting	13 indictors linked to the SDGs
Non-tourism specific frameworks
Measuring and Assessing Job Quality - The OECD Job Quality Framework (2015) [Link]	2015	Framework	1. Earnings 2. Labour Market Security 3. Quality of the Working Environment	10 (4 headline), 1 supplementary
OECD How's Life? 2020 - Measuring Well-being [Link]	2020	Indicator dashboard	11 dimensions of well-being (Income and Wealth, Housing, Work and Job Quality, Health, Knowledge and Skills, Environmental Quality, Subjective Well-being, Safety, Work-Life Balance, Social Connections, Civic Engagement)	36 (headline), 44 supplementary
OECD Regional social and environmental indicators (Edition 2021) [Link]	2021	Statistical database	1. Environment 2. Health 3. Safety 4. Social inclusion 5. Housing	42 indicators
OECD Rethinking Regional Attractiveness in the New Global Environment report: Attractiveness indicators [Link]	2023	Quantitative framework	14 dimensions, across 6 domains of attractiveness (economic attraction, connectedness, visitor appeal, natural environment, resident wellbeing, land use and housing)	54 indicators
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [Link]	2016	Framework	17 SDGs (split by 169 targets) that can be split into the pillars of economic, social and environmental	169 targets