Adopted in 2012, the Strategy Document of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) is the first vision document for the COMCEC for six main cooperation areas including tourism. To achieve strategic objectives defined in the COMCEC Strategy, COMCEC Coordination Office launched the COMCEC Project Cycle Management (PCM) Programme in 2013. Carried out under the support of COMCEC PCM Programme and coordinated by SESRIC, the project titled “2013-SESRIC-0111 Improving Statistical Capacities of Tourism Sector” aims at building statistical capacity in tourism statistics and overall contributing to the National Statistical Systems (NSS) of the member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) through capacity building programs including short-term trainings.

Within the framework of 2013-SESRIC-0111 Project, SESRIC organised the Training Course on 'Tourism Statistics' at the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman on 17-19 November 2014. The Course was conducted by Mr. Aly Hassan, expert at Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) with the participation of officials from the NCSI and other relevant Omani government agencies.

As defined in the Classification of Statistical Activities (CSA Rev. 1 - October 2009), Tourism Statistics includes statistics regarding visitor activity (such as arrivals/departures, overnight stays, expenditures, purpose of the visit, etc.) associated to different forms of tourism (inbound, domestic and outbound), tourism industries activity and infrastructure, employment and tourism satellite accounts. The subject area “Tourism Statistics” is currently classified under the “Sectoral Statistics” activity of the “Economic Statistics” domain.

The Course included discussion activities and covered the following topics:

• Tourism Concepts, Definitions and Methodology
•  Domestic Tourism Statistics
•  Inbound Tourism Statistics
•  Outbound Tourism Statistics

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2013-SESRIC-0111 Project “Improving Statistical Capacities of Tourism Sector in Mediterranean and Gulf Regions” is funded by the COMCEC.