Sustainable tourism has become a priority on the national agenda of several countries, as well as on an international level, such as at the United Nations General Assembly.

“That’s why this FGD is being held, to prepare material and recommendations from Indonesia that will be presented at the upcoming conference in Manila,” explained I Gede Ardika, the head of the Sustainable Tourism Development Acceleration Task Force.

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The conference in Manila is going to result in the declaration of how important the development of statistical framework is to measure sustainable tourism. Ardika expressed his wishes for the FGD participants to come up with a methodology to measure sustainable tourism, to understand the statistical issues in measuring sustainable tourism and gain some measuring examples to be implemented on a local and national level to act as a reference for the international level.

“No one has ever discussed creating a standardized basis for data collection of relevant information on a national or sub-national level. This significant gap is limiting the potential development of the policy to improve sustainable tourism,” said Samsriyono Nugroho, Tourism Ministry’s technology and information special staff.

To bridge the gap, the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) with support from the UN Statistics Division (UNSD) has initiated Towards a Statistical Framework for Measuring Sustainable Tourism (MST). This project is a continuation of the UNWTO's previous projects, which are the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) and International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (IRTS).

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Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said that Indonesia has good judgment when it comes to sustainable tourism. In fact, Indonesia ranked second after China in that category.

“Tourism isn’t merely just about destinations, but also takes into account the overall sustainable development of infrastructures. UNWTO defines sustainable tourism as tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impact, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities,” he said. (asw)