Measuring tourism at the border: a critical analysis of the Icelandic context

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to critically review the existing procedure of measuring tourism at the Icelandic border. The major benchmark in this endeavour is the new international standards on tourism statistics (named International Recommendations on Tourism Statistics 2008 – IRTS 2008) endorsed by the World Tourism Organization in 2008. The results indicate that in terms of tourism statistics produced at its border, Iceland is only partly complying with international standards. Therefore, several recommendations are proposed in order to improve the existing way of measuring tourism at the border in Iceland. Although at first sight measuring tourism at the Icelandic border seems easy since there is only one major entry/exit point to/from the country at the Keflavík airport, it is necessary to have an approach fully in line with international recommendations to produce reliable and internationally comparable statistics for the tourism sector in Iceland. In addition, the model of UK’s border survey can be illustrative for Iceland considering the same insular geography and particularly the UK experience in some areas where the Icelandic expertise in border surveying is poor or is lacking (i.e. sampling procedures, data weighting).

KEYWORDS:

• Measurement of tourism
• border survey
• tourism statistics
• Iceland
• World Tourism Organization

Acknowledgements

This paper is related to the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre’s project “The Economic Benefits of Tourism in Iceland” carried out in the period 2013–2015. Special thanks are due to Edward Hákon Huijbens who has reviewed my work in this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.