PROCESSING TOURISM SURVEY DATA Tourism Statistics and Information Management Workshop (October,2005 Jolly Beach Antigua) Presented by: Winfield Griffith, Caribbean Tourism Organization

October, 2005 AIM 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 (Contd) 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 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 - 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

October, 2005 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT 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 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 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 u Provides diagnostics necessary to flag all possible errors u Produces error listings u Allows evaluation of types of errors for correction

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

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

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

Thank You!