This past November 17-22, former GW professor Dr. Douglas Frechtling presented at the Nara Tourism Statistics Week in Japan, a combination of the 13th Annual OECD Global Forum on Tourism Statistics and the UNWTO Special Workshop on Tourism Statistics. The back-to-back conferences were held in Nara, Japan, the first imperial capital of Japan and home to several heritage sites. The Global Forum, was sponsored by the OECD Tourism Committee, Eurostat (the Statistical Office of the European Union) and the Japan Tourism Agency with a goal of providing a platform for the exchange of knowledge, expertise, and opinion on tourism developments and statistics in order to “help guide and impact tourism policies and business”.
The theme of this year’s Forum was threefold:
• measuring and analyzing regional tourism below the national level
• using big data, such as cell phone tracking, for tourism statistics (i.e visitor location patterns)
• using tourism statistics for business and policy analysis
Following the Forum was the Special Workshop, sponsored by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Japan Tourism Agency, and the Nara Prefecture. The workshop focused on “measurement of tourism for policy purposes, measurement for sustainable tourism, and institutional and technical requirements for TSA”. It was during this workshop that Dr. Frechtling presented his keynote speech: “From Tourism Statistics to Tourism Policy and Back Again”. His speech stressed the importance of the Policy Development Process and the need for evidence based research in tourism. To prove this point, Dr. Frechtling used the example of the Brand USA international travel marketing campaign and the resulting controversial economic impact evaluation report. Through his speech, Dr. Frechtling hoped to “raise the level of understanding about the importance of tourism research and how it is used to affect policy analysis and business.” Dr. Frechtling, who retired last spring, spent 2 months preparing his speech and viewed it as the final wrap up of his thoughts on tourism research and policy analysis. He was appointed Professor Emeritus of Tourism Studies by the GW Board of Trustees.
In addition to Dr. Frechtling’s keynote speech, the conference offered up an array of other speakers including Mr. Juan Tarelli from the National Ministry of Tourism in Argentina, Kiyohito Utsunomiya from Kansai University, and Kazuyuki Tsuchiya from the Mitsubishi Research Institute. Attendees to the conferences included 190 delegates, most of whom were from the Asia Pacific region.
For more information about the conferences visit the 13th Annual OECD Global Forum on Tourism Statistics and the UNWTO Special Workshop on Tourism Statistics pages.
