The South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) is currently in Nauru conducting tourism statistics training for the country’s public and private sectors.
SPTO’s Research Officer Jennifer Butukoro is training tourism data compilers and users from the tourism, statistics, and customs and immigration departments on measuring inbound tourism, tourist expenditure and economic impacts. This will be followed by a practical activity focusing on visitor arrivals data compilations.
Following the two-day training for the public sector, a two-hour power session will be held for private sector stakeholders including Nauru Airlines, accommodation and transport providers as well as fishing and tour operators. This specialized training workshop will focus on the private sector’s role in tourism and how these stakeholders can maximise profits by understanding and utilising tourism statistics.
SPTO Chief Executive Officer, Christopher Cocker said, “SPTO sees the value and importance of market research in the entire tourism chain as it is the foundation for the development of strategies that is pertinent to the success of tourism today and in the future. It is therefore a particularly important point for data users and compilers to understand the importance of data for market research and I am pleased that Nauru has requested this training”.
The statistics training is part of a series of regional trainings to upskill SPTO individual member countries in data compilation and timely submission of tourism statistics. Seven member countries have been selected for this training of which Nauru is one.
The main aim is to bring these countries to a certain level in their statistics compilations to enable SPTO to provide an accurate and timely view of the region’s tourism sector performances and outlook, important for tourism research, developing marketing strategies and policy formulations.
“In the long run, SPTO hopes to work in partnership with key compilers in the region towards a unified, standard template for the collection of regional statistics which is something that is lacking at the moment,” said Mr. Cocker.
Like many island countries, Nauru is constrained in the area of data compilation and analysis of tourism statistics. To date, the country has only released its Quarter 1, 2016 visitor arrival statistics which is the first publication ever to be released by the Department of Statistics.
While there is no historical data available, relevant stakeholders are working together to update Nauru’s Visitor Arrival statistics, with SPTO providing support through the provision of training. Nauru receives a lot of business visitors as well as those visiting friends and relatives (VFR).
Overall, the training will provide participants with the knowledge and skills on basic tourism statistics compilations, and related classifications, concepts and definitions according to the latest UNWTO 2008 Standards.
As a result, Nauru and SPTO will have access to a timely and quality tourism statistics report. The practical experience acquired from such a training workshop is a national capacity building initiative that would go a long way to addressing capacity issues and emphasize the need for adoption of UNWTO standards in classification, concepts and definition.
Nauru’s participants/statistics compilers will be able to compile and disseminate, at minimum, monthly, quarterly, and annual visitor arrivals data that conforms to international standards.
SPTO will be able to address some, if not all, issues relating to collecting tourism related data from Nauru’s Customs and Immigration, Department of Tourism and National Statistics offices.
SPTO will also be able to publish accurate and timely tourism statistics and publications for member countries and private stakeholders, important for research work, developing marketing strategies and policy formulations.
The training is supported by Nauru Department of Tourism and Nauru Airlines.