Balance of payments

Business

Regional science

Archaeology

Neuroscience

Mathematics

Statistics

Advertising

Macroeconomics

Accommodation

Tourism

Psychology

Economics

Geography

Roaming

Official statistics

Computer science

Publication

Telecommunications

Economic statistics

Annals of Tourism Research

Due to the ongoing increase in daily mobility, reductions in border controls, and new trends in tourism, it is important to find new ways to record comprehensively the growing number of tourists. This paper describes a method of extracting cross-border statistics on tourism from roaming call activities found within passive mobile positioning data. Eesti Pank (the central bank of Estonia) has been using these data and methodology since 2008 to calculate the national balance of payments and publish tourism statistics. Statistics obtained from mobile positioning data are herein compared with statistics on accommodation. Results indicate that positioning data enables the generation of detailed statistics on tourism, and for inbound visits, there is a strong correlation with official statistics on accommodation.

Methodological framework for producing national tourism statistics from mobile positioning data