Provincial and Territorial Tourism Satellite Account (PTTSA)

Detailed information for 2019

The Provincial and Territorial Tourism Satellite Account (PTTSA) provides an economic measure of the importance of tourism in terms of expenditures, gross domestic product and employment for each of the provinces and territories.

Data release - February 24, 2023

• Description
• Data sources and methodology
• Data accuracy

Description

The Provincial and Territorial Tourism Satellite Account (PTTSA) provides an economic measure of the importance of tourism in terms of expenditures, gross domestic product and employment for each of the provinces and territories. It allows for comparisons with other industries within a province or territory because the concepts and methods used are based on the framework of the Canadian System of Macroeconomic Accounts (CSMA).

The Tourism Satellite Account is the internationally-accepted framework for measuring tourism activity in an economy. The PTTSA follows the international guidelines adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission, and is rooted in the CSMA.

The PTTSA provides a coherent framework which allows for integration and analysis of economic statistics relevant to tourism, both on the supply (i.e., industry) side and on the demand (i.e., tourist) side. It also defines what are considered to be tourism products and tourism industries, and consequently has helped to shape the development of tourism statistics in Canada and in the provinces and territories.

Statistical activity

The Canadian System of Macroeconomic Accounts provides a conceptually integrated framework of statistics for studying the state and behaviour of the Canadian economy. The accounts are centered on the measurement of activities associated with production of goods and services, the sales of goods and services in final markets, the supporting financial transactions, and the resulting wealth positions.

• Additional documentation

Collection period: Three years after the reference period

Subjects

• Economic accounts
• Tourism accounts
• Tourism indicators
• Travel and tourism

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The PTTSA covers the domestic supply of tourism products (such as transportation, accommodation, food & beverages, recreation & entertainment), the demand for these products by Canadian and foreign visitors, and the employment and GDP generated as a result of this demand. The definition of tourism in the PTTSA follows that adopted by the World Tourism Organization and the United Nations Statistical Commission: the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for less than a year and for any main purpose (leisure, business or other personal purpose) other than to be employed by a resident entity in the country or place visited.

Instrument design

This methodology type does not apply to this statistical program.

Sampling

This methodology does not apply.

Data sources

Data are extracted from administrative files and derived from other Statistics Canada surveys and/or other sources.

Several main data sources are used for the PTTSA. Demand estimates are derived from two main sources, the National Travel Survey (NTS) and the Visitor Travel Survey (VTS), both conducted by Statistics Canada.

The NTS provides data for domestic business and personal tourism expenditure by province and territory, as well as business and personal tourism imports (Canadian spending abroad). It also supplies information that identifies the reasons for visiting a region, the duration of stay and the activities undertaken while at the tourist location. The NTS provides totals for tourism expenditure, within a given region, inter-provincial exports and imports, and international imports. However, the NTS does not provide travel data for residents of the territories. It does provide travel data for residents of provinces travelling into the territories. Information from the supply and use tables are used to fill this gap. Estimates for pre-trip expenses (a portion of domestic demand) also rely on the supply and use tables.

The VTS provides estimates for non-resident tourism demand (separately for the United-States and other countries) within Canada.

Estimates for tourism supply are derived from the supply and use tables - as are GDP and its components, labour income, mixed income and other operating surplus. The supply and use tables are constructed using several large matrices of data that record the inputs (what is needed to make a good or service) and output (the goods and services provided). The supply table indicates the supply of various products by industry, and therefore, tourism supply can be calculated using these data.

Employment data comes from the Canadian Productivity Accounts of the CSMA. These accounts provide information on employment following System of National Accounts principles and using the input-output industry classification. At the aggregate level, the number of jobs in this database is benchmarked to the Labour Force Survey. The industry distribution of these jobs, however, is primarily based on information from the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours, although other industry survey and administrative sources are used as well.

Error detection

This methodology does not apply.

Imputation

No imputation was done.

Estimation

The goal of the PTTSA is to measure the economic activity of tourism, including tourism GDP, employment, demand and supply. To do this, the PTTSA takes demand data from the travel surveys (i.e., the National Travel Survey (NTS) and the Visitor Travel Survey (VTS)) and calculates its contribution to GDP and employment. However, the source data for tourism are dissimilar in that some are based on product detail while others are based on industry detail. Demand data from the NTS and VTS are built up using product details, while GDP and employment data use industry breakdowns. Thus, a link needs to be made between products and industries. Supply, which can be calculated using either product or industry detail, is the linking factor between these variables. A tourism product ratio (or demand to supply ratio), can be calculated for each product. This ratio is then moved into the industry framework so that tourism GDP and employment can be estimated using the information provided by the demand surveys.

For more information on PTTSA estimation, visit the following link:

• Additional documentation

Quality evaluation

Quality evaluation is often done through the use of ratios. Three important ratios are calculated in the PTTSA: the tourism product, the tourism industry and the tourism GDP ratios. These ratios have been fairly stable over various iterations of tourism satellite accounts.

The tourism product ratio is the ratio of demand to supply for a given tourism product. It measures the proportion of a tourism product that is actually purchased by tourists (e.g., in the 2019 PTTSA, 89.6% of spending on passenger air transport in Canada was due to the purchases of tourists). The ratio is useful in the data validation process, and especially in the reconciliation of tourism demand and supply.

The tourism industry ratio is the ratio of the tourism demand for all tourism products produced by a given industry to its output of those products. This ratio is used for internal calculations in the compilation of the PTTSA at the detailed (unpublished) level. It is used specifically in the calculation, by industry, of GDP and employment that is attributable to tourism.

Last, the tourism GDP ratio measures how much of the production of a certain industry (at the published level) is attributable to tourism. It is calculated by taking the tourism GDP and comparing it to the total GDP (i.e., tourism GDP + non-tourism GDP) of the industry. In the 2019 PTTSA, 76.9% of the air transportation industry's GDP in Canada was attributable to tourism. This share is lower than for the passenger air transportation product, because the industry also produces freight transportation services, which have no tourism content.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

Tourism satellite accounts are usually not revised. Many factors can cause changes in a PTTSA benchmark, such as methodological and/or conceptual changes to source data, or new data sources altogether. Therefore, PTTSA benchmarks should not be used for analysis over periods of time. Instead, the quarterly National Tourism Indicators (NTI) provide data on the changes and trends in tourism over time. The NTI incorporate the latest PTTSA benchmarks, but exploit other available data to estimate indicators of tourism (e.g. output, GDP and jobs) on a quarterly basis, and beyond the benchmark year.

Data accuracy

No direct measures of the margin of error in the estimates can be calculated. The quality of the estimates can be inferred from analysis of revisions and from a subjective assessment of the data sources and methodology used in the preparation of the estimates.