Measuring and Monitoring the Sustainability of Tourism at Regional Level in Spain

Executive Summary

Tourism is one of the cornerstones of Spain’s economy. It is an important driver of regional development and has rebounded quickly from the COVID-19 crisis. In 2023, international tourist arrivals in Spain reached 85.0 million, exceeding pre-pandemic levels by 1.8%, and generating EUR 108.8 billion in international tourist expenditure. Domestic tourism has also continued to recover, with 166.6 million domestic tourist arrivals in 2023, up 7.3% on 2022. In 2022, tourism accounted for 12.9% of total employment, only 0.6% percentage points below 2019.

However, as unprecedented pent-up demand drives the recovery of the sector, many destinations in Spain and elsewhere are again experiencing negative environmental and social impacts associated with tourism. Protests by local residents in Spanish tourism hotspots, for example, point to pressure on housing, water resources and public infrastructure.

Despite global discussions during the pandemic about the opportunity for tourism to 'build back better', visitor numbers and expenditure remain key measures of tourism success. While substantial progress has been made in recent years to better understand the impacts of tourism, further work is needed to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism beyond economic factors alone – to inform evidence-based policy development and support sustainable destination management. Such work can help reframe tourism success towards more balanced development models, maximising positive and minimising negative impacts for the environment and local communities.

Developing indicators to measure the sustainability of tourism has been a focus of work for the OECD and other international institutions, for over three decades. However, establishing and maintaining a reliable evidence base that supports decision making has proven challenging. Despite the shared aim of improving the evidence base for tourism policy making and sustainable tourism development, many indicator frameworks include long lists of indicators and metrics that are rarely compiled or used due to limited resources and/or data availability.

While considerable improvements have been achieved in the quality and availability of tourism statistics in recent years, developments have typically focused on capturing the economic impacts, guided by the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (IRTS) and the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) methodological framework. Tourism-specific statistical definitions and regularly produced statistics capturing environmental and social impacts of tourism have tended to lag behind. The recent endorsement of UN Tourism’s Statistical Framework – Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (SF-MST), by the United Nations Statistics Commission is an important step towards achieving international consensus on the production of reliable and comparable data on the economic, environmental, and social aspects of tourism. In addition, improving statistics and indicators for tourism is a key pillar of the EU Tourism Transition Pathway, the multi-annual EU Work Plan of the European Agenda for Tourism 2030, which includes the EU Tourism Dashboard.

Building on existing frameworks and good practices at international, national and regional level, this report presents a system of indicators to measure and monitor the sustainability of tourism at regional level in Andalusia, Catalonia, Navarra and the Region of Valencia. Regional indicators to monitor the sustainability of tourism provide a more granular picture of the societal, economic and environmental impacts of tourism, guiding decision-making for more sustainable tourism development both at the regional and national level.

While striving for comparability and building on international good practices, the tailored indicator framework presented in this report also reflects the local realities of the four participating regions. As such, taking into consideration existing tourism strategies and measurement frameworks in the four regions, the set of indicators is informed by key policy issues and priorities identified, including economic benefits, seasonality, local resident perceptions, accessibility, climate change mitigation and water management.

Structured around 11 policy issues, the framework includes 21 core indicators (measured by 47 core metrics), which are complemented by nine supplementary indicators (measured by ten metrics) to capture regional specificities. A sub-set of ten ‘priority’ metrics has also been identified to monitor key policy issues in a simple manner (see table below). This can help prioritise action towards sustainable development despite resource constraints.

 

Dimension	Policy issue	Indicator	Metric
Economic	Benefits to the local economy	Tourism employment	Direct tourism employment as percentage of total employment
	Reduced seasonality	Tourism seasonality	Share of the top 3 months relative to total annual nights spent in the region
	Reduced vulnerability	Market dependency	Share of nights spent by domestic tourists relative to total nights spent
Social	Local community sentiment	Residents’ perception of tourism	Average satisfaction of local residents with tourism development
		Tourism pressures on local population	Regional population living in municipalities with highest tourism intensity and density
	Attraction of visitors	Tourist satisfaction	Satisfaction of international and domestic tourists with overall experience during the trip
	Inclusive tourism development	Gender equality	Gender pay gap in tourism
Environmental	Climate change mitigation	Carbon emissions	Share of tourist arrivals to destination by sustainable transport modes (train, bus or non-motorised transport)
			Average length of stay (international tourists)
	Water management	Tourism water use	Expenditure on water consumption by accommodation establishments

A policy-led approach to indicator development – which first identifies the key policy questions to prioritise data needs – can help facilitate evidence-based decision making, turning data into action for sustainable development. Tourism sustainability indicators can serve as a means to increase awareness of the importance of sustainability among tourism destination stakeholders. The process of identifying and implementing a set of indicators fosters collaboration between data specialists and policymakers to ensure that the ‘top-down’ identification of policy issues is aligned with the ‘bottom-up’ availability of data. Continuous work to review and improve the system of indicators in the four Spanish regions will help to ensure that it remains ‘fit for purpose’. The report highlights avenues for future development to refine indicator methodologies and close existing data gaps on central policy issues such as cultural heritage, greenhouse gas emissions, waste and digitalisation.