Introduction
14.60203. Passenger transport and travel are service categories that are strongly related and for which compilation often involves the same or similar data sources. Passenger transport includes fares and other expenditures related to the carriage of passengers, including any taxes levied on passenger services, such as sales or VAT (see MSITS 2010, para. 3.95). Travel covers goods and services for own use or to be given away, acquired from an economy by non-residents during visits to that economy. Hence, travel is transactor-based, which makes the compilation of data on travel challenging compared with most other service categories that follow a product-based classification (see MSITS 2010, para. 3.115).
Compiling statistics for passenger transport and travel
14.61204. To compile statistics for passenger transport and travel, compilers can draw from a variety of data sources, including an ITRS (which can provide information on monetary flows between travellers and tourism services providers and payments made through bank notes, traveller’s cheques or credit cards), payment card data and other administrative sources, such as immigration records. However, surveys remain an especially important data source. For passenger transport, those may include dedicated transport surveys aimed at large transport enterprises, such as airlines or railway operators.
14.62205. For the EBOPS travel item (exports), survey types can include traveller surveys, border surveys, household surveys and enterprise surveys, covering accommodation establishments and tourist intermediaries, such as travel agencies and tour operators. Travel agencies are the traditional intermediaries between travellers and travel-related services providers, such as hotels, car rental agencies, cruise lines and package tour operators. Direct reporting allows for a better measure of travel expenditures booked through those intermediaries than is possible with an ITRS. Travel agencies can distinguish travel components for individual travellers only when those travellers purchase tours to foreign countries. Tour operators are often better able to provide the product classification of the different services assembled for package tours. That information can be obtained through a direct report for tour operators.
14.63206. Visitor surveys may provide more detailed insights, such as the purpose of travel, the type of person travelling, the structure of the expenses made during the trip and those expenses are paid. Supplemental sources include tourism activity statistics (accommodation providers’ statistics) and accommodation prices in the consumer price index. On the debits side, mirror statistics from partner countries can be used.
Passenger transport
14.64207. Transport services should be recorded on a gross basis: the value of passenger transport services should include fares and other expenditures, such as commissions of ticket sales, related to the carriage of passengers.
14.65208. Given prevalent practices of interlining and code sharing by airlines, compilers should obtain data on revenue earned by an airline from residents of other countries, rather than data on sales by an airline to residents. It may be possible to collect such data since airlines keep records on revenue generated by country of sale. However, as not all airlines earning revenue from residents of a particular country have offices in that country, it may be difficult for compilers to obtain complete coverage of passenger fare revenue earned by non-resident operators from residents of the home country. In such cases, a data model based upon the number of non-resident passengers carried by resident operators, passengers’ countries of origin and destination and average fare rates could be used to produce an estimated value.
14.66209. An alternative means of measuring passenger fare revenue earned by non-resident operators is to collect information on the total value of tickets sold in the compiling country and to deduct the earnings of resident carriers from that total value. An estimate of ticket sales may be derived from a household budget survey or other surveys of individuals.
14.67210. In some cases, passenger fares may be a component of package tour payments, and the compiler may, in consultation with travel industry representatives, have to separate passenger transport and other travel components.
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