ABS ALIGNMENT WITH INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS
Alignment with international standards ensures that Australian tourism statistics are coherent, comprehensive, reliable, relevant and comparable with the tourism statistics of other nations. The ABS contributed considerable resources to the update process for the tourism and macro-economic standards to ensure that Australian views were taken into account and that the outcomes of the revision process are conceptually coherent and practical.
When Australia produced its first tourism satellite account in 2000 for the reference period 1997-98 an agreed set of standards for tourism satellite accounts had not been finalised by any of the relevant international organisations. As a result, at the detailed level there are some differences between the conceptual framework and presentation of the Australian TSA and the recommendations in the initial TSA standard. In implementing the revised standards, the ABS will address some of these differences that can be readily implemented from existing input data to improve alignment with the revised standards.
Non-compliance with standards affects international comparability but is necessary in some cases where the ABS strongly disagrees with the theoretical position taken on a particular issue or where the costs of compliance (e.g. provider burden and problems of data availability) exceeds the materiality of the issue in the Australian context.