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In attendance: Joanne Henderson NISRA; Paddy O’Kane NISRA; Patricia Wyers NISRA; Ian Stanley NISRA; David Marshall NISRA; Patsy King CSO; Paul J Crowley CSO; Mairead Griffin CSO; Andy Fallows ONS; Bernie Morris FI.
Minutes of last meeting: Reviewed and accepted.
Terms of reference: ToR reviewed and CSO to send out final document for comments. Recommendation to specify the membership. Also a desire that external members would make presentations at the meeting. Agreement that both the Tourism Liaison Group and Technical sub-group would meet once a year.
CSO’s Household Travel Survey: Currently weighted to 8 NUTS regions and the number of adults in household (aged 18 or over). CSO is currently reviewing its grossing methodology and will probably be revising data in the next release (Q3 2014) or the following one (Q4 2014). Age to be included as a weighting factor. CSO will share the results and impacts with NISRA, giving an indication on when this information will be available and the effects on back series. NISRA will share their methodology and documents on weighting from the CHS with CSO.
With regard to using outbound trips to calibrate visits to NI, CSO will consult with Eurostat on this and will inform the group. CSO is to provide NISRA with results with and without extra calibration (for outbound trips) and will also share information on child only trips and anything on trips taken by those under 16. The CSO hope to provide confidence intervals for the HTS- there are more important priorities in the next year or so and this will be done after reviewing/revising grossing methodology. CSO to review data from the HTS which NISRA plan to publish going back to Q2 2010- especially quarterly data by reason for trip. NISRA will share information on overnight trips by NI residents to RoI and any arriving through NI ports.
Day-trips: NISRA currently collecting day trips in their CHS. NISRA to look at definitions/guidance given to interviewers. There was agreement that the Eurostat manual was very vague and could be improved. The CSO plans to collect data for domestic same-day visits for survey year 2018. At the moment they are looking at ways to collect this data.
North-South publication timeframes: It was agreed that publication timeframes would be kept under review.
Joint publications: CSO & NISRA to consult with NITB, FI &TI regarding producing an Island of Ireland publication. Aim to produce one in the next 12 – 18 months and thereafter every 3 to 4 years.
TSA: Currently no requirement by Eurostat on the CSO to produce a Tourism Satellite Account. They do not have the resources available to work on it at the moment. TSA is also not currently a priority with NISRA.
PCI vs SOT: The CSO is moving the Passenger Card Inquiry to a CAPI system with plans to go live in 2017. At a second meeting in the afternoon, there were discussions around the differences in the SOT and PCI. NISRA would prefer to have few breaks in the series, but the decision on whether to use the PCI will depend on the outcome of the QIF bid with ONS. There were discussions about the differences in the 2 surveys and why there is a need for the two. In anticipation of the changeover, the ONS will produce a model using record level data from the CSO’s Passenger Card Inquiry & FI’s Survey of Overseas Travellers to fill in gaps in data that will not be provided by CAPI.
Timetable of releases: HTS – generally about 3 months time lag (with the exception of Q 4 which will have a time lag of about 4 months, due to extra questions asked and also due to Eurostat extra edits). Q3 2014 may also be delayed if the grossing methodology is changed for this release.
CHS – 15 weeks
SOT – about 3 weeks after it gets Overseas Travel data from the CSO
PCI – 70-80 days
Overseas Travel – within 28 days generally
AOB: Cruise ships: NISRA publishing number of cruise ships and total capacity for all ships. Mobile phones: CSO working on a research project on mobile phone data to determine travel patterns of tourists. NISRA to consult directly with John Dunne in the CSO about this project.
Next meeting of the All Island Tourism Statistics Liaison Group: Aim for June 2015.