Abstract

Tourism satellite accounts (TSAs) have been widely recognized as important tools to measure the economic contribution of tourism. However, due to lacks of detailed data for tourism,especially for tourism expenditures, a national TSA has not been developed in China. This study, therefore, introduces a full-scope tourism accounting framework with the systematic analysis of tourism from the perspective of supply, demand and product sides simultaneously.Then,a pilot TSA is established and discussed for a case study in Zhejiang Province, China. The TSA supply table for tourism products and reconstructed input-output table covering tourism and non-tourism sectors are presented here ,and tourism direct gross value added (TDGVA) and tourism indirect gross value added (TIGVA) are defined to measure the whole impact triggered by tourism in Zhejiang Province, China. The empirical results show crucial it is for tourism development to enlarge inputs for accommodation, catering and road transport. Overall, the methodology and results reported here provides the new perspectives on evaluating tourism industries economic importance，and promotes further TSA development and applications for both academics and practitioners.