Jargon Buster
Tourist or visitor
- What does this mean?
-
The main distinctions between a ‘tourist’ and a ‘visitor’ are that ‘tourists’ do not include people making day visits, while ‘visitors’ can include people making day visits. Also, in theory, ‘tourists’ can include people travelling on business purposes, while ‘visitors’ does not.
Here the World Tourism Organization’s, the English Tourist Board’s and the DCMS’s definitions of ‘tourist’ should generally be used – especially in the more precise form proposed by Eurostat.
Eurostat’s glossary of definitions says that tourists are:
‘persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes… There are three elementary forms of tourism in relation to a given area:
– Domestic tourism (the activities of residents of a given area travelling only within that area, but outside their usual environment),
– Inbound tourism (the activities of non-residents travelling in a given area that is outside their usual environment),
– Outbound tourism (the activities of residents of a given area travelling to and staying in places outside that area and outside their usual environment).’
The same resource defines a visitor as ‘any person travelling to a place other than his/her usual environment for less than twelve consecutive months and whose main purpose of travel is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited …. The term visitors (domestic and international) comprises tourists and same-day visitors.’ See also visitor and TOURIST.
- How did we get this definition?
-
Acting in response to European Union directives, and to identified policy needs, in 2004 the Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS] placed a renewed emphasis on the economic importance of tourism.
The relevant EU Directive calls for the creation and collection of uniform statistics on tourists and tourism. And in an extension to this in September 2004 the DCMS initiated a process of setting up ‘UK Tourism Satellite Accounts.’ Central to this initiative is a clear requirement that organisations and local authorities working with tourist-related activities: use a consistent definition of ‘tourist’ and adopt a uniform approach to the data collected.
- Related and similar definitions
-
Hence, to enable arts facilities to align their data collection with the requirements of regional development agencies [RDAs], the UK DCMS and the European Union, it is recommended that tourists be defined as: ‘persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes… There are three elementary forms of tourism in relation to a given area:
– Domestic tourism (the activities of residents of a given area travelling only within that area, but outside their usual environment),
– Inbound tourism (the activities of non-residents travelling in a given area that is outside their usual environment),
– Outbound tourism (the activities of residents of a given area travelling to and staying in places outside that area and outside their usual environment.’
At the same time Eurostat defines a visitor as ‘any person travelling to a place other than his/her usual environment for less than twelve consecutive months and whose main purpose of travel is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited …. The term visitors (domestic and international) comprises tourists and same-day visitors.’
The key distinction between a ‘tourist’ and a ‘visitor’ is that the term ‘tourists’ does not include people making day visits, while ‘visitors’ does. Hence it is also recommended that this basic difference be adopted and used by arts organisations.
- When to use
-
These definitions should be used when carrying out research and analysis intended to produce data to be incorporated in reports on economic impact, for local authorities and RDAs, and for the DCMS (via the UK Arts Funding System).