This paper discusses the revision policy of Canada's National Tourism Indicators (NTI) and summarizes results from some recent studies of data revisions to the NTI. The discussion is timely, as the adoption of explicit data revision policies has been emphasized recently as an essential element in the good governance of statistical systems.

The paper starts with a brief description of the NTI, their underlying conceptual framework, and their sources and methods. Next comes a discussion of the need for data revisions, and an outline of various types of revisions. Then a few sections are devoted to the new NTI revision policy adopted with the first quarter 2004 estimates, and the associated costs and benefits. Revision studies, which have been used to assess quality of national accounts estimates, and the database established to track data revisions to the NTI are described next. Last, results from some recent NTI data revision exercises and studies are summarized.

Custodian: Statistics Canada