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Tourism satellite accounts (TSA) are important tools for demonstrating the economic impact of tourism on a country and state level. A regional TSA (RTSA) offers the statistical groundwork for theoretical as well as practical users to underpin their own statistical evaluations and analyses, providing a regionalised view of consumption by tourists. This paper aims to extend TSA with respect to the indirect effects of tourism and the leisure demand of residents in their usual environment.

The study is based on the recommended framework for TSA‐building. The case study of Vienna will demonstrate the valuable information of a RTSA as city tourism is a very complex phenomenon and this impact is difficult to capture.

For 2006, the TSA method found that tourism made €1.36 billion in direct value added to Vienna's economy, or a share of 1.9 per cent of the Viennese gross regional product. Considering the direct and indirect effects of tourism a total value‐added of €4.05 billion for Vienna in 2006 is obtained. According to this figure, tourism contributed 5.7 per cent to the overall regional gross value added in Vienna. In taking an overall look at the expenditure on leisure‐time consumption and in the non‐usual environment (tourism), it is found that Vienna contributes €8.11 billion or 11.5 per cent to the gross regional product.

This paper is one of the first papers about building a TSA for a city. Vienna was the first state to commission a regional TSA (RTSA), followed by Upper and Lower Austria.

Der Tourismus ist in vielen Ländern zu einem bedeu‐tenden sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Phänomen gewor‐den, sodass die Erklärung seiner langfristigen Entwicklung von zunehmendem Interesse 1st.

The availability of an adequate pool of suitable labour is a key location factor for the labour‐intensive hotel and restaurant business. Yet, in spite of high unemployment (unemployment rate: 17,3%) and schemes to import foreign seasonal workers, the sector still encounters considerable difficulties in filling job vacancies. Of the many approaches towards elucidating the mystery of high levels of unemployment concurrent with a perceived scarcity of workers, key contributions are the high seasonal fluctuations in demand and the mismatch theory. The phenomenon of seasonal unemployment may be understood as a special aspect of demand scarcity. The seasonal dependence of tourism demand generates variations which in turn cause personnel to be fired at a grand scale at the end of a season. The mismatch theory goes a long way towards explaining a large part of the problems encountered in filling job openings while sectoral unemployment remains high. Key elements of the structural imbalance are qualifications and age, availability in terms of geography and time, and earnings expectations (including working conditions and career options). Further facts are also that the inflow of foreign workers keeps wages and working conditions down and drives austrian workers into unemployment or in other sectors. Overall, it appears that the future supply of an adequate number of qualified labour is a growing problem, because the need for operations to position themselves in the quality segment will raise the labour and qualification threshold.

This study aims to demonstrate that the information content of a regional tourism satellite account (RTSA) is a very complex phenomenon and the complete impact of tourism is difficult to capture.

The study is based on the recommended framework for tourism satellite account-building and is concentrated on Lower and Upper Austria, two of the nine Austrian federal states. The RTSA provides an analytical framework of issues related to tourism economics and tourism policy as well as for model building, tourism growth analysis and productivity measurement.

Considering only direct effects, calculations showed that tourism made around 3 1/2 per cent of the Upper Austrian gross regional product. In case of Lower Austria, the relevant figure was around 1 percentage lower. Considering the direct and indirect effects, tourism contributed almost 6 per cent to the overall gross regional product of Upper Austria, and in Lower Austria, tourism contributed around 5 per cent to the overall gross regional product.

This paper is one of the first papers about considering (beside the direct effects) also the indirect effects of tourism and pointing out the true economic impact of tourism on the whole economy on a regional level.

In this session, chaired by Prof. Egon Smeral, four papers have been presented, all concentrating on new instruments for improving marketing in tourism.

In its efforts to foster tourism development the state has the choice of either giving direct grants or stimulating specipc investments and promoting co‐operation through low‐interest loans. In either case, the effort is aimed to improve the supply and preserve the competitive capacity of destinations. Public funds also flow into national and regional tourism organisations (NTOs and RTOs) established to co‐ordinate and market tourism products and destinations. State promotion of tourism constitute an intervention in the market mechanism which needs to be expressly justified in a market economy context. Market failure, transaction costs and the growth‐stimulating effect of promoting innovation and knowledge are the fundamental conditions for state intervention (necessary conditions), even though by themselves they are not sufficient to justify intervention. This also requires a cost/benefit analysis: a state measure is advantageous only when it causes an improvement in the overall economic welfare (sufficient condition).

Destinations are strategic marketing units which consist of territorially delimited, consolidated areas of co‐operation. Options to improve a destination's competitive edge depend on the determinants of competitiveness. A destination's competitive position can be explained by factor conditions and conditions of demand, quality and structure of sectors involved, strategies as well as market and organizational structures. The competitive system depicted above forms the basis for the creation of “customer value” and therefore is a source of future competitive advantages. Customer value is the gap perceived by the customer between the perceived (multidimensional) benefit and the perceived (multidimensional) costs/prices of a destination compared to its competitors. The aim of the article is the explanation of “Customer Value Management” as a key strategy to affect a destination's competitive position by means of supply‐side measures as well as the communicated and achievable relative consumption/cost position.

The impact of tourism on the economy of a country can be described through the use of input‐output analysis, which allows the calculation of the direct and indirect value added effects of tourism spending. After this stage of value added generation a new multiplier process — induced through the spending of the created income — increases the first round impact.

In a study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research conducted a written survey of the Austrian hotel industry (hotels and similar establishments). The sample comprised more than 3,000 establishments in the three to five star category.

Vorarlberg is one of the nine federal states of Austria. In terms of size, it is the smallest state in the country. Approximately 80 % of its area is mountainous with the greater part belonging to the “Hochgebirge” (high‐mountains). For the most part, tourism in the high‐mountain areas is dominated by ski tourism, while the lower valleys have a twin season supply.