Monday, October 18, 2010

Lies, Damned Lies and Tourism Statistics

It pays to have an increasingly sceptical view on statistics; particularly tourism statistics. Over the past month we must have been subjected to more tourism statistics than any other industry in the world.

We have had statistics for the value of The Open, statistics on the value of The Ryder Cup, statistics on the value of Nature Tourism, of golf in Fife, of The Commonwealth Games, of Homecoming Scotland 2009, of Homecoming Scotland 2014, of Convention Business to Edinburgh, of the value of sailing, of the importance of food and drink and this is only 23.2% of the sample range we could have actually used...but they are statistically significant!


All we need now is an accurate figure on the value of tourism statistics to the national economy. We reckon it could be as high as 10% of overall GDP....

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