Tourism Statistics and the Business Register in Italy： A Comparative Analysis and future Outlooks for Integration

After the proposal of a possible insertion of tourism statistics （supply side） （TS） into Framework Regulation Integrating Business Statistics （FR1BS） on which an interesting debate is in progress between Eurostat and NSls, Istat （Italian Institute of Statistics） has started a costs/benefits analysis of this integration. ASIA （Statistical Register of Active Enterprises）, built up by Istat, represents in Italy the official source about the structure and the economic performance of the enterprises. ASIA, whose statistical units are enterprises of industry and services, has been developed through the statistical integration of different administrative sources, other minor archives available （covering particular sectors） and structural business statistics currently produced by Istat. The supply side TS are produced by lstat through surveys via Intermediate Bodies （Local Authorities）： each Intermediate Body has its own local register of accommodation establishments based on Local Kind-of-activity unit （LKAU）. In this paper, the results of a comparative analysis between the statistical units as recorded in ASIA and as surveyed by TS are presented; from first outcomes, considerable issues about data quality appear both at level of coverage for the three Nace groups of the TS （also underlined in the Methodological Manual on Tourism Statistics where for Italy a difference of 70% is reported） and for loss information relating to the location of the activities （switching from LKAU to Enterprises） as well as for timeliness （ASIA has two years of delay）. Then, the administrative local tourism registers （LTR） are analysed to understand： how many they are, their dissemination in the Italian territories, their primary purpose and source, the variables contained, the frequency of updates. This preliminary analysis is needed to identify the operative activities that Istat, together with the Intermediate Bodies, should start to use administrative archives for statistical purposes and to develop a unique tourism satellite archive （TSA）, facing many difficulties related to the reception of several LTR as well as methodological issues for record linkage. On the other hand, a TSA would lead numerous advantages： a unique and official list of internal accommodation establishments; a step towards integration of TS into FRIBS; a starting point to begin to use also administrative data produced by the Italian Police （mandatory communications on guests in the interests of public safety）, having a comparison term to assess their coverage.

A Case Study on Xiamen-TSA(1998)in China

Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is the newest method for measuring the impact of tourism on economy in the wor1d. There has been globally a big trend of development of TSAs after it was approved as a internationa1 standard by United Nations Statistica1 Commission (UNSC) in March of 2000. This research is a first pilot exercise of TSA method in China. The result of the research has drawn much attention from the tourism administrations and statistics offices at national level and the 1ocal levels.