A Tourism Satellite Account for the Netherlands: Approach and Results

During 2002–03 Statistics Netherlands (CBS) conducted the pilot project ‘Tourism Satellite Accounts for the Netherlands’. This article describes the main results of this project. A Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) provides a systematic and consistent description of the economic effects of tourism based on an internationally recommended method in accordance with the system of National Accounts (UN et al, 1993). Roughly, tourism accounted for 2.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Netherlands in 1999. In total, visitors spent about ₠21 billion in the Netherlands that year, which generated some 330,000 jobs, almost 4% of the total number of jobs in the country.