UN Tourism Advances Global Standards for Tourism Measurement
UN Tourism has made significant progress in strengthening how tourism is measured within the global economic system, following its participation in the 57th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission - the world's highest authority on official statistics. A key outcome was the endorsement of the updated Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services 2026, to which UN Tourism contributed, enabling countries to more accurately capture tourism's role in global trade flows and economic policy. The Commission also acknowledged the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST), the first statistical model to assess tourism's economic, social, and environmental impacts collectively, moving beyond traditional GDP indicators.
Alongside these developments, UN Tourism convened a high-level side event exploring how sustainability reporting by tourism businesses can be aligned with internationally agreed statistical frameworks. The discussion focused on linking company-level ESG data with national statistics to improve consistency across the tourism economy, better support small and medium-sized enterprises, and reduce fragmented reporting requirements. Secretary-General Shaikha Al Nuwais noted that strengthening global tourism statistics and connecting them with business sustainability reporting ensures that decisions across the sector are grounded in reliable, comparable evidence.
Source: UN Tourism