Measuring Tourism Where It Matters: Rethinking Tourism Impact Assessment for Sustainable Destination Governance
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In a context where tourism is recognised as a key driver of economic, social and territorial development, the question of how to effectively measure its economic impact is becoming increasingly important in ways that truly reflect inclusive and sustainable growth. This paper addresses the mismatch between established impact assessment tools and the specific, decision-oriented information needs of regional actors. The article clarifies why canonical tools (Leontief input-output model, tourism satellite account, social accounting matrix and computable general equilibrium) underperform for regional steering and proposes pragmatic pathways toward more territorially embedded measurement approaches. Using a qualitative exploratory approach, we conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with executives and analysts from public tourism bodies, destination management organisations, private operators and business associations in the canton of Fribourg (Switzerland). Five cross-cutting issues recur across stakeholders: (1) volatility and uneven quality of inputs; (2) insufficient standardisation limiting comparability over time and across destinations; (3) salient information gaps and interpretative ambiguities, particularly regarding same-day visitors, mobility patterns and community-level impacts essential to promoting sustainable growth; (4) resource constraints and production bottlenecks that hinder regular measurement; and (5) data sensitivity, requiring clear governance agreements, anonymisation and appropriate levels of aggregation. The discussion proposes moving beyond top-down approaches and promote collective territorial intelligence that can better guide sustainable tourism policies and investment choices, with implications for Swiss cantonal practice and other decentralised systems.
Institution: HES-SO Fribourg
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7166675308