The contribution of tourism to the UK economy: Satellite account perspectives

This paper reports on recent UK progress towards the construction of a tourism satellite account. The nature of the account is explained and the paper argues that the tourism satellite account provides an indication of the contribution of visitor-related service activity to the UK economy. The paper demonstrates that a consistent accounting of tourism industry activity potentially provides new information for policymakers and the tourism industry itself The account can inform decisions in terms of directing scarce resources, and in identifying critical elements in tourism sector success or failure. Moreover, the tourism satellite account permits the industry to be understood in the mainstream of economic analysis.