Measuring the Economic Impact of Visitors to a Destination

Many tourism destinations are focused on measuring the impact of tourism and the number of visitors to the area.  Visitors are typically defined into various categories including day visitors and overnight visitors.

Visitors can be defined in a number of ways.  Is the visitor just passing through and spending the night somewhere else?  Or is the visitor staying overnight at the destination?  If so, is the visitor staying in a hotel, inn, villa (condominium), private home or bed and breakfast?  It is possible that overnight visitors may stay in unpaid lodging.  An example of unpaid lodging is when a visitor is staying with family members or friends.  Other examples include a visitor who owns a second home at the destination or a visitor who is staying at a home or condo that belongs to someone else.

Once a destination has defined the different categories of visitors based on their travel patterns, the next step is to estimate the economic impact of tourism.  Calculating the economic impact of tourism can also help in analyzing taxes generated by visitors as well as jobs created by the travel and tourism industry.  Surveying the visitors is one of a few ways to determine visitor spending.  Once the survey is complete, the figures would be displayed in the following way:  as a per person, per day amount.  This along with other analysis can provide an estimate of the economic impact of tourism

Sources: 
Belin, Dave.  “Estimating the Impact of Visitors.”  November 29, 2010. www.hotelnewsnow.com (December 15, 2010)
Belin, Dave.  “Segmenting first step to measure impact” November 15, 2010. www.hotelnewsnow.com (December 15, 2010)