A New Approach To Tourism Satellite Account Compilation An Application In Reunion Island

In the past, the observation of tourism growth consisted in the description of the visitors characteristics, etc. Nevertheless, without economic indicators in value terms, it is difficult to "sell" tourism as significant activity for an economy and "to compare" its importance with that of other economic activities. The aim of this paper is to overcome this traditional analysis. . On the contrary, we tried to deep inside the economic reality of the tourism activity using the tool of the Tourism Satellite Account adding to the classical framework based on the demand side an alternative way called the supply side approach. Our results show that, despite the absence of some important variables (like inbound expenditures, …), Tourism Satellite Account compilation can still be obtained which increase the useful of this tool. Thus, we have managed to reveal that the contribution of tourism activities to the total value added created in Reunion Island is around 2.6%. This figure can appear lower than we can expect to a small tropical island but it is greater than traditional sectors of Reunion Island's economy such as agriculture or sugar cane industry, and tourism contributes to the diversification of the economy of Reunion Island.