Introduction to Tourism Satellite Accounts
5.2 Some key concepts
In order to capture ambiguous subjects of tourism into the measurable framework, TSA has several key definitions with which tourism as an industry will be distinguished from the rest of the economic activities. Here are some of the key concepts that would be helpful for us to follow the TSA logics.
5.2.1 Visitor and tourist
While a word ‘ tourist ’ gives us the connotation of leisure travelers, there are nonleisure trave- lers, such as company employees who travel to meet clients, or nonleisure personal travelers such as visiting ailing parents in their hometown. A word ‘ visitor ’ will include those trave- lers. There are some cases where we should exclude certain visitors, however. Diplomats, military personnel, and migrant workers are excluded from visitors. In the TSA-related docu- ments, the word ‘ tourists ’ might have been carefully replaced with visitors, which has a dif- ferent meaning to tourists. So, the important idea for differentiation would be not whether a person would be a tourist or a nontourist, but whether a person would be a visitor or a nonvisitor. In other words, the word ‘ tourism ’ is officially used, but the word ‘ tourist ’ is not officially used as an important definition in the discussion of TSA. This is one of a few points where students become confused. It appears that students tend to think that the word ‘ visi- tor ’ is another technical jargon that is used in TSA and that it is approximately similar to what they know as ‘ a tourist ’ . There may be an extra need for TSA experts to explain the definition of ‘ visitors ’ in comparison with ‘ tourists ’ . Figure 5-1 shows the basic concept of visitors.
Relationship between visitors and tourists
Tourists But visitors excludes;
Diplomats Military personnel
Immigrant workers Business
persons Non leisure travellers
visitors
Figure 5-1 Conceptual image: visitors in relation to tourists.
5.2.2 Usual and unusual environment
To illustrate the concept of usual and unusual environment, here are several questions. If you visit a soccer World Cup game in Germany or the Olympic Games in Greece from UK, you are most likely classified as visitors. Here are some more questions;
● If you visit a Ritz-Carlton hotel 10 miles (16 km) from your residence, are you considered as a visitor?
● Many of those who live in Tokyo, Japan enjoy their occasional visits to the Tokyo Disneyland, which is located in Chiba prefecture but only about 10 miles (16 km) away from the central part of Tokyo. Are Tokyoites considered as leisure visitors when they visit Tokyo Disneyland?
● A person commutes over 50 miles (80 km) one way every day for years by Shinkansen (bullet train) from his residence in Oyama to his work in Tokyo and to be paid in a head office of a large bank in Tokyo. Was the person a nonleisure visitor because of the distance traveled (more than 50 miles)?
● If a British banker went to the Gold Coast, Australia and stayed there for 1 month to close a business deal, is she considered a visitor?
● If a Korean student went to the US to study English for 6 months, but thanks to his hard work, obtained good English scores in TOEFL and switched status to a full-time graduate student to stay 2 years, is he still a visitor?
Now you want to introduce one simple method to decide whether a person in question can be considered as ‘ a visitor ’ . One of the possible methods would be ‘ distance ’ to be used as a cutoff line, with those who travel above a certain distance to be considered visitors. We have a minor problem, however, that there is no universal agreement on the distance. In the US, the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the American Travel Survey by the Bureau of Transportation Services use difference distance (75 miles and 100 miles, respectively), and indeed the distance criteria for visitors is different from one nation to the other. If you insist on imposing universal distance such as 50 miles (80 km), then for a nation like Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf or Aruba in the Caribbean, there would be almost nobody ever to be classified as domestic tourists ( leisure visitors) at all (see Figure 5-2 ).
This discussion on usage of certain distances to distinguish usual and unusual environ- ment is one example of the fact that some parts of TSA are still evolving, and that more feed- back from various sources should be a welcome addition to improve the concept. We need hospitality and tourism students to study and contribute to the advances of TSA, as majority of the existing advancements have been made by contributions from economists who may have less exposure and experience to the operations of hospitality businesses.
5.2.3 Supply-based concept and demand-based concept
Let us consider the I-O concept that we learned earlier. How did we classify the industry? We looked at the products, or output, from each industrial sector to classify the group of industrial
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sectors. You have no difficulty in identifying apple and tomatoes as outputs from the agri- culture sector as they share common characteristics. Characteristics of outputs that industry produces can usually help us identify the specific industrial sector.
5.2.4 Supply-based concept
In the process of the above consideration, we did not pay attention to a question of who pur- chased those bananas or water melons. Apples are apples irrespective of buyers ’ character- istics, such as whether the buyer was households, governments, or firms, or they purchased apples for final consumption or for intermediate goods to produce apple pies. In order to attribute a product to the producing industry, we will consider the output. As we learned in the I-O concept, production activities produce outputs to be supplied either to other indus- trial sectors as intermediate goods or to households for our final demand. If you look at only the product characteristics to classify the industry, it can be considered as a supply-based con- cept that you use to classify it. Your opinion that a gun was the product of the manufacturing sector is not affected by whether the buyer was the government (military, police forces), firms (private securities company, criminal group, rebel forces), household (hobbyist, self-defense), or the purpose of consumption (for peace keeping, attack, criminal activities, show of force).
Usual and unusual environment
Distance can be used to distinguish unusual environment. It still poses some questions.
MANAMA
Awàli Jabal ad
Dukhan Umm
an Na’sãn
Gulf of Bahrain
26°00 26°00
25°40 25°40
50°20
50°20 50°40
Gulf of Bahrain
Jidd Hafs Madinat
‘Iså Ar Rifá’
ash Sharqi
Al Muharraq Mina Salman
Sitrah
HAWÃR ISLANDS
QATAR SAUDI
ARABIA SAUDI ARABIA
0 5
0 5
10 km 10 ml
Figure 5-2 Usual and unusual environment . Source: CIA World Factbook.
5.2.5 Unique characteristics of tourism products
Now, let us consider typical products that tourists purchase. After John and his family travel from Europe to Boston, US, he goes through immigration. Then he exchanges his Euro into US dollar (banking sector), buys a local map and a bottle of water (retail sector), and picks up a taxi (transportation sector) to a hotel. After checking in, they walk around the area and purchased some souvenirs and snacks for children (retail sector). After some relaxation at the hotel, they walked to the movie theater across the block and purchased entrance tickets (entertainment sec- tor). Then they went to the seafood restaurant for a meal (restaurant sector).
Now look at what John ’ s family purchased in Boston. All the goods and services that they purchased were mostly from the Services sector, but can you identify by the characteristics of the product which products can be easily distinguished as ‘ tourism products ’ ? Banking services can be purchased not only by visitors (leisure visitors tourists, and nonleisure visitors nontourists) but also by nonvisitors who live and work in Boston, which is one of the thriving large metropolitan cities in the US. Retail shops and taxis can be used by both visitors and nonvisitors. Souvenirs and snacks may be purchased by both visitors and nonvis- itors, and the same applies to entertainment products. The last example was the consumption at the restaurant. While tourists such as John ’ s family can spend at restaurants, nonvisitors also choose to eat there. So the supply-based product characteristics will not work well to define tourism. Indeed, the concept of tourism is demand-based.
5.2.6 Demand-based concept of tourism
In dealing with tourism-related economic activities, we have to consider the demand-side. We will build up the activities by determining who purchased the product, and decide whether such a purchase was made by a visitor. We cannot assert that all the revenues at the seafood restaurant were caused by visitors because it also attracts non-visitors (see Figure 5-3 ).