8602.0 - Tourism Newsletter, July 2009  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 31/07/2009  Final
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Tourism Statistics | news


WELCOME FROM OUR ASSISTANT STATISTICIAN

Welcome again to the ABS tourism statistics newsletter. As always, this edition includes information on recent tourism industry related issues and updates, describes current ABS work related to tourism statistics, and contains information about recent and forthcoming ABS publications. This newsletter also includes a brief overview of tourism consumption data.
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The Australian National Accounts: Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), 2007-08 (cat no 5249.0) was published on April 16 this year. It reflects results from the annual TSA update process whereby estimates for the latest year are modelled using movements in visitor consumption. Consequently a less detailed set of information is presented than is the case in TSA benchmark years. It includes revisions to the breakdown of tourism consumption by length of stay in Table 9, and, following revisions to source data used in the compilation of the TSA, minor revisions to some earlier year estimates.

This year's TSA also flags significant changes that will be incorporated in the next issue of the publication (due out in April 2010), as a result of the planned implementation of: the Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework (TSA: RMF 2008); Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC 2006); and the System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008). Coinciding with these changes, there will also be a review of some of the methods underlying the compilation of the TSA. To highlight these changes and ensure that they are understood by the user community well ahead of time, a Tourism Workshop was held on 22 June 2009. A summary of the workshop appears in the appendix of this newsletter.

Finally, the ABS has recently conducted a full review of our industry statistics program. We are currently assessing the input we have received and hope to announce the outcome in the next few months.

We hope the newsletter will provide more insight into the work of the ABS and provide a way for clients and stakeholders to connect with work of the ABS. As such, we would appreciate any feedback regarding the usefulness of the information presented.

Paul Williams
Assistant Statistician
Australian Bureau of Statistics