Assessment of the Scope and Utilisation of Tourism Statistics for England
The English Tourism Intelligence Partnership (ETIP) is a new body that
has been created as part of the Partners for England Initiative between
DCMS, VisitBritain, the Regional Development Agencies and the Local
Government Association. Its main purpose is to lead action and
investment to improve tourism intelligence and statistics within
England.
To help steer its work programme over the next 3 years, ETIP commissioned The Tourism Company to carry out an initial assessment of
tourism statistics for England.
The particular focus of this assessment was on current surveys
and current practice in their analysis, quality, interpretation,
presentation, dissemination, utilisation and relevance.
The
ultimate goal of this assessment was to inform the priorities and
actions of the Partnership in bringing about improvements to the
overall scope, range and quality of tourism statistics within England,
to the way that they are interpreted, presented and communicated to
their user community, and to their relevance and value to that
community.
The work followed a four stage process:
- A
thorough review of the literature, covering any reports or studies on
the availability and use of tourism statistics, analysing and
interpreting the relevance of the various sources, reporting on their
findings and indicating how they will guide the subsequent three stages
of the work. - A thorough review of ‘who does what’ for England
in terms of data collection and procurement, analysis, quality,
interpretation, presentation and dissemination for national, regional
or local tourism data. - An analysis and assessment of how
tourism data is currently used by a range of potential players,
including the relevance and value that it represents to them. An
initial assessment is also required of the weaknesses and gaps that are
perceived by users in the current data, and the significance and impact
of this to the effectiveness of their strategy formulation, planning
and decision-making. - A report containing a summary of the
findings of stages 1, 2 and 3, together with clear guidance on the
priorities for further development and improvement of the collection,
analysis, interpretation and communication of tourism statistics for
England.
