The International Network on Regional Economics, Mobility and Tourism (INRouTe) was a private non-profit association in support of UN Tourism (former World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO)).

INRouTe has been an international reference for the measurement and economic analysis of tourism activity at the sub-national level. INRouTe has supported the management of subnational and local tourism destinations by providing and disseminating relevant knowledge and best practices among scholars and practitioners.

INRouTe focused on the following

Research Areas

Tourism as an economic sector

Tourism as sustainable development

Tourism and territory

Supporting tourism destinations’ key stakeholders

During more than a decade, an expert knowledge-driven network, INRouTe brought together a wide, yet diverse, range of technicians, scholars, practitioners and industry professionals to share information, practices and experiences that endorse the development of conceptual underpinnings, measurement and comparative analyses to provide guidance for tourism destination management.

INRouTe was initially conceived as a project of the UN Tourism Department of Statistics and Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) to promote the measurement and analysis of tourism’s economic contribution at the sub national level by adapting the 2008 international standards on tourism statistics (International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework).

A Conference in Malaga (Spain), sponsored by the Regional Government of Andalusia and the UNWTO, and the UNWTO’s Sixth International Tourism Forum for Parlamentarians and Local Authorities in Cebu, Philipines, were the first steps (in 2008) in creating such international knowledge network.

INRouTe was officially presented at the First International Conference on the Measurement and Economic Analysis of Regional Tourism,  MOVE2009, in Donostia – San Sebastian (Spain) on 27 and 28 October 2009, becoming fully operational in the first quarter of 2010.

BEHIND INRouTe

The Chair of INRouTe, the mastermind behing INRouTe, always was Antonio Massieu.

Mr. Antonio Massieu

Mr. Massieu studied economics in Madrid before joining the Spanish Institute for Tourism Estudies (IET Spanish Acronym). As Vice-Director of the IET, he helped develop and launch various new systems of measuring tourism flows, among which Frontur –based on visitor movements across the country’s borders- and Familitur –which studies the domestic tourism market. He also began the first steps towards creating a Tourism Satellite Account for Spain. He worked with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) during two years as Chairman of the statistics Steering Committee, in his capacity of delegate from Spain. Mr. Massieu began to work in the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in 1999 as Chief of the Department of Statistics and Economic Measurement of Tourism and his immediate goals were to develop support systems for member countries and to expand cooperation with other leading organizations in the industry. Following the World Conference on the Measurement of the Economic Impact of Tourism in June 1999, he was deeply involved in gaining the United Nations approval for the Tourism Satellite Account methodology. The United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) adopted this document in March/April 2000 with the title: “Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework” and an updated version of it was approved in February 2008. Since 2009, leading INRouTe and the numerous experts therein, Mr. Massieu has had the sub-national perspective as the key focus, as such INRouTe and the UNWTO held an agreement so that INRouTe submitted to UNWTO a set of guidelines on sub-national measurement and economic analysis of tourism, which represents a significant step for subnational, tourism destinations.

INRouTe’s work:
2 PUBLICATIONS

Tourism, territory and sustainability:
a statistical insight at subnational levels

INRouTe presented its work: Tourism, territory and sustainability: a statistical insight at subnational levels  during the 6th UNWTO International Conference on Tourism Statistics in Manila, Philippines, June 21 – 24, 2017.

This publication builds on statistical international standards (tourism and environment statistics as well as the corresponding macroeconomic accounting frameworks –Tourism Satellite Account –TSA- and the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting –SEEA-); it also provides guidelines in order to set up a particular type of statistical initiative: a Regional Tourism Information System (R-TIS) conceived for the purpose of linking tourism, territory and sustainability in the perspective of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the setting up of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators (three of which refer to tourism).

Linking tourism (operationally defined in the tourism statistics international standards) and sustainable development (a policy oriented concept without any universally accepted operational definition for its measurement) is a complex and challenging task; this document provides a statistical insight in such connection between tourism as an economic sector that impacts the socio-economic and the environmental components of sustainability due to tourism infrastructure and the activity of visitors.

The statistical insight developed by INRouTe for such purpose is in line with the work undertaken during these last two years by UNWTO and UN Statistics Division: the Measuring Sustainable Tourism (MST) project.

Towards a set of UNWTO guidelines

This document was drafted as a multipurpose document. While the Introduction gives special attention to the singularity of the INRouTe project (which is then presented in chapter 1) as well as to the motivation and role of UNWTO in promoting INRouTe, the remaining chapters include a proposed set of recommendations in relation with the first initiative we would propose to those regions (sub-national entities) where tourism is relevant: the design of a Regional Tourism Information System. Such an initiative should be understood as the ―umbrella for all other initiatives to be undertaken under the INRouTe-UNWTO collaboration during the period 2012-2015.

INRouTe’s work:
MOVE conferences and Venice Workshops

  • MOVE2021 Bogotá Conference,
    22-26 November, 2021, Colombia
  • MOVE2017 Pamplona Navarra Conference,
    22 – 24 November 2017, Spain
  • MOVE2015 Old San Juan Puerto Rico Conference,
    18 – 20 November 2015, USA
  • MOVE2013 Medellin Conference,
    6 – 7 November 2013, Colombia
  • MOVE2011 Bilbao Conference,
    27 – 29 October 2011, Spain
  • San Sebastian Conference,
    27 – 28 October 2009, Spain
  • Málaga Conference,
    29 – 31 October 2008, Spain
  • First seminar on Regional Tourism, in support of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), and in cooperation with CISET / Università Ca´Foscari, CICtourGUNE (Cooperative Research Centre in Tourism) and the Veneto Region Government.
    July 5th & 6th, 2012, Palazzo di Ca´Foscari, Università Ca´Foscari, Venice, Italy.

  • INRouTe II Seminar on Regional Tourism: Moving towards a Regional TSA approach.
    October 9th and 10th, 2014, Palazzo di Ca´Foscari, Università Ca´Foscari, Venice, Italy.

  • UNWTO & INRouTe workshop Subnational Tourism Measurement was held back to back to the 14th Global Forum on Tourism Statistics.
    The afternoon of November 22nd 2016 in Venice, Italy.

A big thank you to Antonio, for leading, and everyone else that contributed to all the significant work conducted by INRouTe for the sake of measuring tourism at subnational levels.

This is a group picture from the first UN Tourism MST (Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism) expert group meeting in 2016 in Un Tourism Headquarters in Madrid. INRouTe’s work has finished because UN Tourism has made an amazing achievement with the approval by UN of the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism, where the subnational perspective is included.

The work continues, and INRouTe has meant a significant advancement in the process.

Thank you Antonio.