Tourism plays a significant role in the Austrian economy. Correspondingly, the Austrian government recognized early the need to prove with reliable figures that tourism is an important economic sector employing thousands of people across the country. With the goal of making the 'tourism industry' visible as guidance for policy decision-makers in their strategic choices, helping them to understand the importance of the tourism sector, the Austrian ministry commissioned the compilation of the Austrian Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA) more than ten years ago.

Since traditional tourism statistics can only partially reflect the diversity of the cross-discipline 'tourism', interest in TSA figures on a sub-national level also grew in the past few years. As a result the tourist boards of three out of nine Austrian federal states commissioned regional TSAs - as a statistical tool to credibly quantify the economic importance of tourism - in order to have a better idea of tourisms contribution in their regions (Vienna Tourist Board, Upper Austria Tourist Board and Lower Austria Tourist Board).

The focus of the paper/presentation will be to describe the methodology used for the existing regional TSAs and to compare different approaches in compiling regional TSAs for the six Austrian federal states where no TSA results are available so far.

Biography: Johanna Ostertag-Sydler is tourism statistician at the Austrian National Statistical Institute, where she is responsible for the calculation of the Austrian Tourism Satellite Accounts and the compilation and analysis of data concerning the travel behavior of the Austrian population.