The Commission presented a report on the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning European statistics on tourism.
Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 is the primary basis for official, harmonised statistics on tourism supply and demand.
The Regulation covers, on the one hand, data on capacity and occupancy of EU tourist accommodation establishments and, on the other, data on trips made by EU residents. The first is typically collected from businesses in the accommodation sector; the latter is typically collected via household surveys.
This first report submitted by the Commission:
Main conclusions: the report concluded that in a joint effort with Member States, the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 led to more and better data output of high-quality statistics on tourism. Since 2012, completeness and timeliness of the data have improved significantly.
The European Tourism Statistics envisaged under the Regulation can be considered as up and running, and providing relevant data to the tourism industrys various stakeholders and to local, regional, national or international administrations.
Outlook: the report also takes a forward look at measures that could be considered with a view to update the legal framework, in light of the conclusions of earlier sections. It also assesses the impact that new user needs and new data sources could have on the system of tourism statistics set out in the Regulation.
Big data offer a big potential for tourism statistics: information obtained from mobile network operators, from booking or reservation systems, from search engines and internet activities, from electronic payment cards or from social media could all feed data into a system of tourism statistics.
Over a longer term, such new data sources could lead to a revolution rather than an evolution in the way European tourism statistics will be produced.
As tourism behaviour and the structure of the tourism sector constantly change, and as new data sources and methods become available, a close monitoring of the current production and output of Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 will remain an important challenge during the coming five years.
As regards the further implementation of Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 in the EU and EFTA Member States, it will be necessary to continue to focus on quality improvements and burden management. In addition, activities will continue with a view to setting up a system for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics on tourism in candidate countries and potential candidate countries.