The internationally agreed upon groundbreaking statistical framework Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST) developed under the leadership of UN Tourism, for measuring the economic, social and environmental aspects of tourism has been adopted by all 193 UN member states.
According to the UN Tourism press note, the agreed framework at the UN Statistical Commission at its 55th session held from 27 February to 1 March 2024 marks a historical milestone towards harnessing the full potential of the sector, providing a solution to the pressing need for a harmonized methodology to effectively assess the sustainability of tourism.
This achievement is the fruit of a seven-year UN process led by Austria and Spain as co-chairs of the UN Tourism Committee on Statistics, with Saudi Arabia and Seychelles as co-vice chairs marks a paradigm shift, going beyond GDP by enabling the measurement of what matters most to people and planet.
The Statistical Commission expressed an overwhelmingly enthusiastic support with 34 countries, 3 world regions and international organizations taking active part in the deliberations. the Commission also welcomed the future development of an implementation programme, it added.
Established in 1947, the UN Statistical Commission gathers Chief Statisticians from Member States and international organizations, and is the highest decision-making body for international statistical activities. The last time that the Commission adopted a statistical standard for tourism was in 2008, when the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account framework were presented.
In the margins of the United Nations Statistical Commission, Austria, Spain and UN Tourism co-organized the high-level side event “Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism: Closing the gap between policy and statistics”, in collaboration with the UN Committee for Economic-Environmental Accounting.
The event raised awareness of the Statistical Framework for MST and functioned as an informative preamble to the UN Statistical Commission’s formal deliberations, it noted.
