Tourism is one of the cornerstones of Spain’s economy, and an important driver of regional development. However, monitoring tourism policies and measuring the sustainability of tourism are major challenges for regions in Spain. Regional governments lack the tools, frameworks, and capacity to measure the economic, social and environmental impact of tourism activities, and to monitor the effectiveness of policy interventions to manage tourism development sustainably. The OECD has supported four Spanish regions – Andalusia, Catalonia, Navarra, and the Region of Valencia – to develop and pilot a system of indicators to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism. This work was funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument and implemented by the OECD, in co-operation with the European Commission. The technical support project was undertaken to support countries’ efforts to implement reforms in response to the Covid pandemic, to build a more sustainable, resilient and digital tourism ecosystem in Europe. Tourism in Spain has rebounded quickly from the Covid crisis in terms of tourist numbers and expenditure. While the pandemic has accelerated global discussions about the opportunity for tourism to 'build back better', more work is needed to achieve tangible progress on moving towards more sustainable models of tourism.
This report on Measuring and monitoring the sustainability of tourism at regional level in Spain draws on lessons learned from a series of fact-finding meetings and workshop, resulting in the identification of a set of core priority issues and, in turn, selection of available indicators to monitor and manage them. The work complements recent and ongoing efforts to measure the sustainability of tourism at regional, national and international levels. It builds on these frameworks and good practices to develop indicators that take into account the unique characteristics of participating Spanish regions, whilst facilitating international comparability.
Chapter 1 introduces the policy context and broad aims of this initiative. Chapter 2 provides an overview of existing sustainability initiatives and indicator frameworks for tourism around the globe. Chapter 3 introduces the tailored framework developed to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism in the four Spanish regions. Chapter 4 provides detailed compilation guidance for the core and supplementary indicators. Finally, Chapter 5 outlines avenues for future development.
This report was approved by the OECD Tourism Committee through written procedure in August 2024.