Dr. Nagore Espinosa, CEO of in2destination and Coordinator of INRouTe – International Network on Regional Economics Mobility and Tourism on June 22nd at the VI UNWTO International Conference on Tourism Statistics organized by UNWTO in Manila (Philippines) presented the document “Tourism, territory and sustainability at subnational levels: fostering credibility for its measurement and supporting key stakeholders” prepared by INRouTe.
This conference again makes the Philippines a historic destination in the measurement of tourism. Already in 2008 in Cebu, the committee of parliamentarians asked the UNWTO to advance in the matter of sub-national measurement and in 2017 in this sixth conference Manila goes down in history as the witness of:

  • UNWTO presenting the progress made towards the measuring sustainable tourism framework (MST)
  • UNWTO announced that the framework will be developed not only for the national level but also for the subnational – historic moment – which has the support of the United Nations Statistics Unit, the largest guarantee that exists worldwide.
  • INRouTe presented the document: “Tourism, territory and sustainability at subnational levels: fostering credibility for its measurement and supporting key stakeholders”. This publication is the result of almost 8 years of work by the network team and means a breakthrough towards clarifying the steps to take in the measurement at the subnational level.
  • Many representatives of the administration and management of destinations demonstrated an interest in the MST framework and emphasized the need to strengthen positions and improve communication between the statistical institutes and the administration to improve the implementation of this framework and the systems of tourist statistics.
  • It was important not only to have information that speaks of the past but also to have information that predicts trends.
  • In this line, on the sustainability challenges faced by destinations, emphasis was placed on the consensus of early warning indicators for the three dimensions: social, environmental and economic.
  • almost 1000 people attended the event, record figures for an event of this nature.

We are aware of the importance of rigorous measurement in the tourism sector, of the complexity of measuring at subnational levels and of the desire of the sector and destination managers to make this measurement framework at the subnational level a reality and in that we have worked at In2destination and from our role in INRouTe. We invite you to know more about INRouTe.