A Tourism Satellite Account for Austria. Economic Links, Methods and Key Findings

The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) developed by Statistics Austria and WIFO for Austria has as its main categories "tourism-specific", "tourism-related" and "non-tourism specific" production industries, which in turn produce "tourism-specific", "tourism-related" and "non-tourism specific" goods and services. The latter comprise goods and services supplied primarily to non-tourists. The macroeconomic importance of tourism and its contribution to the overall value added is a crucial index for economists. In order to arrive at this central index, the TSA tables need to take into account all direct and indirect effects triggered by tourism, with the exclusion of business trips. In applying the input/output multipliers to the TSA tables, it was found that € 18,25 billion were added in direct and indirect value during 2000, which translated into a contribution of 8.9 percent made by tourism to the overall gross value added (GDP) in 2000. For 2001, this contribution appears to have grown slightly, to 9.1 percent. In determining the macroeconomic importance of tourism and leisure time activities, domestic leisure consumption by Austrians needs to be taken into account as well. This consumption contributed 6.8 percent to the overall value added in 2000, and is likely to have increased to 7.1 percent in 2001. It is when looking at domestic expenditure on leisure consumption in the familiar (place of residence) as well as non-familiar environment (tourism) that the weighty dimension of the leisure time industry becomes fully apparent. Direct and indirect value added in 2000 added up to a grand total of € 32.19 billion. With this, the leisure time industry contributed 15.6 percent to Austria's GDP in 2000. By 2001, the industry's contribution to the overall gross value added had probably increased to over 16 percent.