Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism

With the support of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), UNWTO has launched the initiative Towards a Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST). The aim is to develop an international statistical framework for measuring tourism’s role in sustainable development, including economic, environmental and social dimensions.

​Such a standards-based framework can further support the credibility, comparability and outreach of various measurement and monitoring programmes pertaining to sustainable tourism, including the derivation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators and those of UNWTO’s International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO).

Overall, the statistical framework from the MST will provide an integrated information base to better inform on sustainable tourism, to facilitate dialogue between different sectors and to encourage integrated, locally relevant decision making.