L'Analyse de la consommation touristique: Les methodes ex post Available to Purchase

The topic of visitor consumption is of great interest to international organizations and scientific research because of its particular significance. The analysis of tourism activity's economic impact on the host country might be carried out by implementing ex post methods and approaches based mainly on the System of National Accounts. These methods refer to the tourism contribution to the national economy and the analysis of direct and indirect economic effects. The aim of this kind of tourism expenditure's analysis is to obtain the necessary information and to acquire the knowledge needed to formulate and implement the appropriate economic policy, as well as to elaborate the adequate planning and rational tourism management. Tourism activity has specific characteristics rendering its economic analysis a difficult task. In the present paper the main methods attempting to estimate the tourism's economic impact are reviewed, with emphasis on those allowed to obtain the most reliable results; tourism satellite accounts and input‐output analysis. This review is followed by a presentation of the evaluation criteria permitting to estimate their value. In the second section we summarise the scientific debate on tourism economic impact, which primarily focuses on two main issues — the theoretical approach and the adequate methodological instrument. The paper concludes by highlighting the actual state of art in this research field.