Tourism Supply - Measuring the Supply of Tourism
This book chapter describes the methods currently used to measure the
production of the tourism industry using the Standard Industry Classification
(SIC) and the modified North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
The limited focus on the the service industry meant that the SIC codification
posed serious challenges for tourism researchers. The new NAICS classification
system adopted in 1997 uses the production function as its organizing
principle in grouping businesses into industries. The system is hierchical
with industry grouped together into sectors. There is no tourism sector
included in the NAICS, but a list of the NAICS codes that describe the tourism
production system at the industry and US national industry level are provided.
Smith, S. L. J. 1995. Defining and describing tourism. In Tourism
Analysis: A Handbook.Essex, Longman Group Limited, Second Edition: 20-41 This chapter describes the challenges with describing and defining tourism.
In particular it focuses on defining tourism as a demand-side concept - from
the perspective of the person taking the trip or supply-side - from the
perspective of the business supplying the tourism product or service. A
history of tourism definitions is presented as well as the current definition
from the World Tourism Organization (WTO): "Tourism is the set of activities
of a person travelling to a place outside his or her usual environment for
less than a year and whose main purpose of travel is other than the exercise
of an activity remunerated from within the place visited." On the demand-side
tourism can be classified by such factors as length of stay, type of traveller,
type of trip, type of expenditure, transport mode or accommodation type. On
the supply-side, the tourism industry can be classified first by whether the
business (or the whole industry type) does at least a certain percentage -
usually 15% - of their business with tourists and secondly by the type of
tourism product (e.g. passenger air transport, camping, recreation and
entertainment). The Standard International Classification of Tourism
Activities (SICTA) is also presented which is a globalized system for
classifying and measuring tourism activity. It combines supply-side concepts -
the basic structure is based on establishments - and demand-side concepts -
establishments are selected according to the nature of their customers (e.g.
the percentage of tourists)
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Roehl, W. 1998. The Tourism
Production System: The Logic of Industrial Classification. In The Economic
Geography of the Tourist Industry. Dimitri Ioannides and Keith G. Debbage
(ed.), New York, Routledge: 53-76.