|
10:15-10:30 |
Tea/Coffee |
|
|
10:30- 10:45 |
Welcome Minutes of last meeting Review Terms of Reference/Group name/Group membership |
|
|
10:45-11:05 |
World Tourism Organisation |
Antonio Massieu |
|
11:05-11:35 |
Business Registers – Conducting a regional analysis of Enterprise Demography and Employment in Tourism |
Steve MacFeely |
|
11:35-12:05 |
CSO Survey Update
|
CSO |
|
12:05-12:15 |
Hotel bednights – CSO and FáilteIrelandsurveys |
Action from last meeting |
|
12:15 - 12:20 |
EU Regulation Update |
NISRA/CSO |
|
12:20- 1:20 |
Lunch |
|
|
1:20-2:00 |
Tourism Statistics Branch/NISRA update
|
Kevin Sweeney Donna Ruddy |
|
2:00-2:30 |
Cross border data
|
All |
|
2:30 |
Tea/Coffee |
|
|
2:40 |
Tourism Satellite Account/Economic Appraisal of Tourism |
All |
|
3:00 |
Date of next meeting and closing remarks
|
|
Minutes of the first meeting of the All-Ireland Statistics Liaison group held on September 27, 2011
Chairperson: Kevin Sweeney (NISRA)
Attendees:
Kevin Sweeney (NISRA)
James Gillan (NISRA)
Donna Ruddy (NISRA)
Alison Brown (NISRA)
Elaine Longden (NISRA)
Claire Watson (NISRA)
Linda Craig (NISRA)
Andrew McCormick (NISRA)
Antonia Massieu (UNWTO)
Steve MacFeely (CSO)
Margaret McLoughlin (CSO)
Jim Dalton (CSO)
Mairead Griffin (CSO)
Patsy King (CSO)
Peter Nash (Tourism Ireland)
Sharon Comiskey (Tourism Ireland)
Pamela Wilson (NITB)
Anne Marie Montgomery (NITB)
Ray O’Leary (DTTAS)
Brian Maher (Fáilte Ireland)
Lorraine Fleming (DETI)
Paul Rutherford (DETI)
Apologies:
Eamonn McKeon (ITIC)
The chairperson welcomed all participants to the meeting on World Tourism Day. Minutes of the previous meeting on 31st March 2010 were agreed. Outstanding actions to be covered in agenda.
2.1 A proposal was put forward to amend the terms of reference to share chairmanship/organisation of the group between CSO and NISRA. Agreed
2.2 To reflect the all island scope of the group the group will now be called the All Island Tourism StatisticsLiaison Group and the reference to ‘national’ policy requirements in the ToR will be removed. Agreed
2.3 A further proposal to widen the membership of the group to researchers/academics was put forward.
Action:
BM will raise at the RoI Annual Tourism Research Forum on 28th September.
Interest will be sought from University of Ulster academics.
2.4 Frequency of meetings. The group will aim to meet twice a year, in spring and autumn.
Revised terms of reference attached
Antonia Massieu provided an overview of the role of the UNWTO. The main focus of the discussion was around how administrative data sources could be exploited for the benefits of measuring tourism, employment in tourism and case studies of best practice. Antonia also reported that the UNWTO plan to publish guidance on how to produce regional tourism statistics.
SMacF provided a summary of the work CSO has untaken to provide measures to compliment the standard official tourism statistics using existing data from business registers. The presentation illustrated where tourism enterprises were concentrated acrossIrelandand also where the dependency of persons engaged in the tourism sector is. The CSO adapted the UNWTO Tourism Activities to those industries recorded on the CSO Business Register. CSO plan to develop this work and produce monthly outputs.
CSO provided an update on the Country of Residence Survey, Passenger Card Inquiry and Household Travel Survey.
The Overseas Travel release will be published monthly and contain a 3-month rolling average of trips. The release will provide quarterly standard errors and seasonally adjusted figures.
Ongoing work resulting from changes to the PCI in 2010 has lead to a delay in publication of bednights, expenditure and RFV. CSO are working to clear the backlog and plan to publish 2010 data by the end of the 2011 and 2011 data in 2012. CSO will revise 2009 estimates using the new methodology; therefore there will be a break in the series between 2008 and 2009.
PN requested some narrative around the changes to the Overseas Travel release and reasons behind the changes.
SMacF sought feedback from the group on preferred timescale for the publication of 2011 data. Should the data be released in one block or quarter by quarter when ready?
All stakeholders agreed that quarter by quarter when ready would be preferable unless timings between those releases would be short e.g. one/two weeks.
AM rasied concerns over publishing both unadjusted data and the seasonally adjusted series in the same publication as this may cause confusion. BM stated that unadjusted figures are used by stakeholders and the industry to measure performance and marketing, to inform industry actions in the short term and for operational purposes. RO’L and PW agreed with the need to provide unadjusted figures.
Household Travel Survey
CSO plan to publish 2010 data by the end of 2011.
KS provided an update on the implementation of the NI Passenger Survey during 2010 and 2011 and raised concerns over the number of non-contacts. KS requested that stakeholders consider the length of the survey as shorter surveys would decrease the number of non-contacts. DR gave an overview of the workTourism StatisticsBranch, including some results from the NIPS and domestic tourism survey. DR also informed the group on the work carried out by NISRA/ONS on the continued improvement to the tourism surveys (Quality Improvement Fund projects).
BM suggested splitting the NIPS questions from the long questionnaire into 2 separate questionnaires to be used alternately, 1 in 10 and 1 in 20. PW raised concerns about the number of minimal and partial completes as this lead to a number of visitors with unknown reason for visit. DR pointed out that the number of unknowns had decreased from 15,000 to 2,900.
ACTION:
TSB to meet with NITB, TIL & FI to review customer needs and shortening of questionnaire.
7. Cross Border Data
The cross border shopping data was collected through a module in the Quarterly National Household Survey Q2 2009 and 2010 – the suitability of transport survey for the collection of tourism day trips data was discussed.
Current cross border data gaps identified were ROI day visitors to NI. This will be discussed as part of the review of suitability of the CSO Travel Survey.
The current PCI collects data on the number of nights spend in NI, this was discussed as a possible alternative/additional source of nights in NI, the SOT currently provides the number of nights in NI, but concern of the small sample size was raised.
CSO raised concerns over the sample size of ROI residents taking overnights in NI as recorded via the Household Travel Survey. Once the 2010 HTS data finalized CSO will discuss the robustness of the estimates with NISRA.
CSO & FI hotel bednights investigation – to be put back on agenda once final PCI data available.
Action:
CSO/NISRA to discuss PCI data in measuring nights within NI
JG gave a presentation setting out the previous TSA/Economic Appraisals carried out within theIsland. He sought views from the group on the need for updated TSAs/Economic Appraisals. DETI have recently put the need for an updated TSA on the Departments research agenda. RO’L stated that TSA is not a priority for RoI at present as resources are not available.
Date of next meeting
Date to be confirmed but aim for April/May 2011 in Dublin– to be Chaired/organised by CSO.
