Abstract:
In the context of South Africa, there is an increasing interest in the provision of a TSA to be made available at a region level (Ragab, 2014). The satellite accounting approach and its regional extension are likely to be the most appropriate tools to estimate the economic contribution of the tourism sector (Jean-Pierre & Perrain, 2016). Nonetheless, due to the complexity and limitations of the methodology (Jones & Munday, 2010) the researcher had to define the boundaries of the data available in South Africa at a regional level in terms of the RTSA requirements (United Nations, 2013). The construction of an RTSA can be done through a top-down or bottom-up approach (Jean-Pierre & Perrain, 2016; Song et al., 2012; Pham et al., 2008; Fletching, 2008). The top-down approach is the more common method used in literature since it is more cost effective, utilises existing resources and allows for national level and inter-regional comparisons. Taking this into consideration, the researcher applied a top-down approach in order to determine the appropriateness of the secondary data available in South Africa in the context of constructing an RTSA for a region.
The data challenges in constructing an RTSA for the Western Cape region, in South Africa, related to the lack of a regional account, the inadequate tourism surveys at a regional level, and the unbalanced reconciliation of supply and demand. As in most emerging destinations, the study area did not have an available regional account detailed enough to satisfy the structural requirements of an RTSA. The location quotient technique was used to regionalise the national production table made it less accurate. The tourism data available at a regional level did not report on the necessary expenditure indicators to regionalise the national tourism expenditure; further, the international and domestic tourism data varied in indicators reported at granular level. This created inconsistencies in the estimated regional expenditure distribution between international and domestic tourism. Finally, these data challenges resulted in the regional supply and tourism demand ratio to be unbalanced. The aforementioned needs to first be addressed for an accurate and reliable RTSA to be constructed for a region. Therefore, as in many emerging destinations, the lack of adequate tourism supply and demand data is a critical limitation in estimating the value of tourism as an economic activity at a regional level. In conclusion, emerging tourism destinations would need to use alternative methods to construct an RTSA that would be deemed less accurate but still adequate for policymakers decision-making processes.
