PROCESSING TOURISM SURVEY DATA Tourism Statistics and Information

PROCESSING TOURISM SURVEY DATA Tourism Statistics and Information Management Workshop (October, 2005 Jolly Beach Antigua) Presented by: Winfield Griffith, Caribbean Tourism Organization PRESENTATION FOR THE ALLIANCE OF AGRICULTURE OCTOBER, 2003

AIM v Examine main issues in tourism data processing F Status of stats offices vis-à-vis tourism offices F Data processing and tendency to outsource F Efficient document management F Developments in Data capture/Input F Manual vs machine editing F Examples of Useful Data files F Training and maintaining adequate personnel F General Discussion of experiences and Recommendations October, 2005

KEY AGENCIES IN TOURISM DATA PROCESSING s Statistical offices – Strengths - Historically - collectors of primary data - producers of secondary stats - background of personnel - legislative responsibility Weaknesses - insufficient staff - insufficient money - subject to excessive bureaucratic control October, 2005

KEY AGENCIES IN TOURISM DATA PROCESSING (Cont’d) v National Tourism Offices Strengths - Occasional - collectors of primary data - producers of secondary stats - relatively large budgets - minimal bureaucratic control Weaknesses - relatively little in-house statistical capability - high staff turn-over in many offices October, 2005

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AGENCIES v Mostly restricted to sharing FVisitor data entered and/or processed by each other FOccasional Ad hoc activities FNo great functional cooperation October, 2005

DATA PROCESSING: WHO DOES WHAT? s Mainly processing E/D cards - Key Punching By Immigration and/ or Tourism Office or Statistical Office s Visitors Surveys - Mainly Tourism office or outsourced s Tourism Establishment Surveys - Occasionally Stats Office - Usually stats Office s Other Surveys - Usually Tourism Office of with outsourcing October, 2005

DATA PROCESSING: HOW IS IT DONE? s Mainly keying information from questionnaires - - October, 2005 scanning and optical mark sensing not often Used sacrificing money and time in the long-run Low investment in Software and hardware Very slow Internal capacity building

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT v Need to improve systems for inter-office document handling - avoid omission significant numbers of records for data base - E/D cards very susceptible – (e. g in Barbados Immigration October, 2005

CHOOSING DATA ENTRY/STATISTICAL SOFTWARE & METHOD v Availability of Appropriate Software - Some Determining factors: - Cost - Software capability - User Friendliness - Hardware capability - Level of in-house technical skill - Administrators’ thinking October, 2005

MEDIA FOR DATA CAPTURE/INPUT v Creating clean and convenient data files - Scanning Tools - Internet forms - Excel, Access, etc. October, 2005

Manual Vs Machine Editing s Both types of edits necessary and unavoidable – mix of edits depends on: u. Type of data entry/data capture u. Type of data entry software used u nature of errors observed October, 2005

USE OF MACHINE EDITS s machine edit rules Provides diagnostics necessary to flag all possible errors u. Produces error listings u. Allows evaluation of types of errors for correction u October, 2005

MANUAL EDITING s s More Sophisticated user-friendly software aided reduction Manual editorial intervention still indispensable October, 2005

TRAINING AND MAINTAINING ADEQUATE PERSONNEL s Training programmes: not regular u Not consistent u Compounded by high level of staff turnover u s s Need for ongoing training regime Creation of a pool of trained persons to choose from October, 2005

CONCLUSION s s s Need for bi-lateral cooperation between agencies with common research interest Need to manage our processes more efficiently Need to equip ourselves for greater technical sustainability October, 2005

Thank You! PRESENTATION FOR THE ALLIANCE OF AGRICULTURE OCTOBER, 2003