Studies in methods – serie

International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics 2008 Compilation Guide is a companion document to the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (IRTS 2008). The primary purpose of this Compilation Guide is to provide further clarifications and practical guidance for using sources and methods to compile statistics on tourism. It is designed to support the production of a high quality set of basic data and indicators in each country, and to strengthen the international comparability of tourism statistics. The Compilation Guide was prepared by national compilers of tourism statistics, experts from international and regional organisations, and by staff of UNWTO.

The publication is intended to serve as a reference document on management aspects of conducting a population and housing census. The handbook provides guidelines, mainly, for population and housing censuses based on traditional field enumeration. The objectives of the publication, in particular, are to provide guidance to countries on how to: (i) develop a structure able to effectively manage the census planning and operational processes; (ii) plan all the processes that need to be considered in establishing a census; and (iii) design control and monitoring processes. The publication is also useful to those who need to plan surveys given the detailed description of the overall process of collecting, processing, and disseminating the data. The structure of the handbook reflects as closely as possible the census cycle. The initial chapters discuss management aspects concerning the planning and preparatory stages, followed by discussions on the operational stages, i.e.: pre-enumeration activities, field operations, processing, dissemination of census results, evaluation and finally documentation and archiving