Gerd Ahlert

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e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 5, No. 6, 2007 
http://ertr.tamu.edu 
 
 
Gerd Ahlert 
Gesellschaft für Wirtschaftliche Strukturforschung (GWS) mbH 
The Contribution of Tourism to Employment in Germany - Assessment within a TSA 
Employment Module and Impact Analysis. 
 
Tourism activities of private households and industry lead on the demand side to numerous 
purchases of a wide variety of goods and services. Due to its cross-sectional economic 
character this demand is produced on the supply side by a wide, partially very heterogeneous 
range of industries with very different employment characteristics (e.g. qualification, type of 
employment). The employment module of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) provides a 
consistent framework for estimating the direct employment within the tourism characteristic 
industries. For Germany such a TSA employment module has been compiled, some of its 
results are presented in this paper. Due to the fact that the employment module only specifies 
the direct employment within the tourism industries the full employment impact of private 
tourism consumption across the whole economy has been finally estimated within two 
macroeconomic model calculations.  
 
Key words: Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA), TSA employment module, impact analysis  
 
 
Gerd Ahlert 
Gesellschaft für Wirtschaftliche Strukturforschung (GWS) mbH 
Heinrichstr. 30  
49080 Osnabrueck  
Tel.: +49 (541) 40933-17  
Fax: +49 (541) 40933-11  
Email: ahlert@gws-os.de  
Internet: www.gws-os.de  
 
 
Biography 
Gerd Ahlert has worked for several years at the University of Osnabrueck at the Department 
of Economics. During this time he has developed a sport-specific macroeconomic simulation 
model with a detailed sport-economic data set. Since 2001 he is working at the Institute of 
Economic Structures Research (GWS) where he is responsible for the construction of theme-
specific national accounts based data systems, so-called satellite accounts, and economic 
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e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 5, No. 6, 2007 
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sector resp. industry analysis. In 2003 he has compiled a first tourism satellite account (TSA) 
for the Federal Republic of Germany. This study has been extended in 2006 for a detailed 
TSA employment module. Besides he has estimated a transportation satellite account for the 
German economy which identifies the contribution of internal firm transportation activities to 
gross domestic product (GDP).  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
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 Tourism and all travel-related activities of private households and industry carried out 
in the course of day and overnight trips lead on the demand side to numerous purchases of a 
wide variety of goods. These are not limited merely to the hotel, catering and transport 
industries, but also account for goods and services in the leisure industry and the retail sector. 
Based on its cross-sectional economic character, tourism demand obviously consists of goods 
and services which on the supply side are produced by a wide, partially very heterogeneous 
range of industries and are often directly related to other very different sectors of the 
economy as a whole (retail goods and services, among others). This explains why tourism is 
not listed as an independent sector in the System of National Accounts (SNA).  
 Such consistent coverage of the direct economic significance of tourism with regard 
to both supply and demand is provided by the tourism satellite accounts (TSA) developed at 
an international level in the 1990s (Commission of the EC, et al., 2001; Eurostat, 2001). With 
the aid of supplementary tourism-related statistics and studies within such a framework the 
economic dimensions of tourism − which are fully covered in the SNA − are explicitly 
revealed in a separate tabulating framework designed as a satellite of the SNA (see Smeral, 
2005; Heersharp, et al., 2005; Ahlert, 2007). The TSA facilitates the precise definition of the 
direct economic relevance of tourism and thus creates the possibilities of comparison with 
other economic activities or economic sectors.  
 For Germany, the empirical implementation of the TSA concept was carried out as 
part of a pilot study in 2003 (Ahlert, 2003). The pilot study "Introduction of a Tourism 
Satellite System in Germany" focused on the estimation of the monetary TSA core tables T1 
to T6.  
 Based on the results of the TSA pilot study, a second study for Germany was 
commissioned in 2005, taking into account the international recommendations and 
experiences relating to estimated relevance of tourist demand to employment (OECD, 2000; 
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e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 5, No. 6, 2007 
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Laimer, 2005; Liberos, 2005). The methodological basis of the TSA employment module 
complies with the specifications of the two internationally accepted TSA manuals 
(Commission of the EC, et al., 2001; Eurostat, 2001). The TSA employment module with its 
various tables thus represents a tourism satellite account which has been expanded to include 
the employment aspect in much more detail. This ensures full comparability with the other 
tables of the TSA. Its core table is the TSA standard table 7 relating to employment within 
the tourism industries. It only considers the calculation of the direct employment effects of 
tourism consumption of private households and industries within the twelve tourism 
industries (comp. table 1) that are characteristic of tourism. Besides that it takes into account 
the number of enterprises and undertakes a gender specific split of the employment specific 
data.  
 
Table 1: The 12 tourism industries in the TSA framework 
1 Hotels and similar
2 Second home ownership (imputed)
3 Restaurants and similar
4 Railway transport services
5 Road passenger transport services
6 Water passenger transport services
7 Air passenger transport services
8 Transport supporting services
9 Transport equipment rental
10 Tour operators and travel agencies
11 Cultural Services
12 Sporting and other recreational services
Tourism industries
 
 
In the following some empirical results of the German TSA employment module are 
presented. For 2005, thanks to the tourism consumption of the private households in 
Germany as well as the business travel carried out by companies, these twelve tourism 
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industries were directly responsible for an annual average of roughly 1.8 million gainfully 
employed persons. If this figure is compared to the number of people employed in the overall 
economy, a purely arithmetical share of 4.7% is obtained. Solely due to tourism consumption 
the two core tourism industries alone (hotel and catering industries) employ 493,000 and 
842,000 people, respectively. This amounts to more than 73% of all those employed in the 
twelve tourism industries. The five sectors of the transport industry engage approximately 
19% or 345,400 people directly due to tourism activities. The railway sector alone employs 
4.4% of those working in tourism, while 11.7% work in the "road passenger transport 
services" and 2.8% in "air passenger transport services". The "tour operator and travel 
agency" sector accounts for 3.8% of all employees working directly in tourism activities, 
corresponding to nearly 70,000 employed people. Taking also into account the employees in 
the tourist information offices and in the tourism associations, at least 24.000 employed 
persons can be added additionally.  The extremely heterogeneous cross-sectional tourism 
sector designated as "culture, sports and other recreational services" accounts for 
approximately 3.1% of all people employed directly in the twelve tourism industries.  
 Approximately 287,400 persons or just less than 16% of those working in the sectors 
characteristic of the tourism industry are self-employed. By contrast, the proportion of self-
employed people (including the family members who assist them) in the overall German 
economy (across all sectors) is only 11.2% and thus significantly below that of the twelve 
sectors of the tourism industry defined according to the TSA concept. The high proportion of 
self-employed people is also due to the fact that the assisting family members also make a 
considerable additional contribution to employment within several tourism industries 
especially in the catering industry.  
 The tourism consumption of the private households and companies were directly 
responsible for the employment of an annual average of more than 1.5 million employees in 
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the twelve sectors of the tourism industry in 2005. The direct employment stimuli were the 
strongest in the catering services (684,600 employees), the hotel industry (401,200 
employees) and in the road passenger transport services (198,500 employees).  
 Following the very detailed employment specific recommendation of the OECD in 
the context of the TSA approach (OECD, 2000) the German TSA employment module 
includes, in addition to the aforementioned quantitative data for employment, supplementary 
qualitative data for selected employment variables (including gender, type of employment, 
employment status, and qualifications). This reveals, for example, that the proportion of 
women employed is significantly higher. On average, within the twelve sectors of the TSA 
tourism industry, it is roughly 4.5% higher than the overall economy average of 47.3% for all 
employees. In the two areas designated as the "hotels and similar" and "tour operators and 
travel agencies", this figure accounts for more than 68% of all employees of the respective 
sector.  
 Furthermore, it is shown that the proportion of employees with low skills is 
significantly higher in the tourism industries. While the proportion of employees without 
professional training at 17% deviates only slightly from the average value for the overall 
economy, it is striking that only 48% of all employees paying have completed a practical 
vocational training. The average for the economy overall was 61% in 2005. Moreover, at 
31% the proportion of employees who provided no information about their professional 
education was significantly higher compared with the average value of just under 14% for the 
economy overall. The proportion of those with higher qualifications within the twelve 
tourism industries, at roughly 4.1%, was over 5% below the average value for the national 
economy. Against this background, however, it is an extremely positive sign that the 
educational performance in the tourism industry has continuously improved in the last years. 
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Currently it is approximately 1.7 percentage points above the corresponding figure for 
employment in the overall economy.  
 
 Since the TSA employment module is limited to the quantification of the direct 
production effects of the tourism consumption on employment in the twelve tourism 
industries (Smeral, 2006), the overall impact of private tourism consumption to employment 
in Germany was furthermore determined in two supplementary model calculations. The direct 
and indirect effects, as well as the effect of tourism on the overall national economy, can be 
established in an input-output-analysis. Such a calculation using the static Leontief 
employment model makes it possible to compute not just direct but also indirect employment 
effects (see Miller & Blair, 1985). These appear due to indirect production effects via 
remuneration for purchased products in those companies which supply goods and services to 
the companies that produce the directly demanded tourism specific consumption products, i.e. 
in the corresponding suppliers and sub suppliers for intermediate products. Based on the 
tourism consumption of private households in Germany stemming from domestic production 
in the year 2000 (Ahlert, 2007), which added up to approximately € 114.5 billion (US$ 105.8 
billion), the calculation shows that there was a direct and an indirect effect on employment 
due to tourism related expenditures by private households amounting to 2.14 million 
employed people. This corresponds to approximately 5.5% of all employees in the year 2000.  
In addition to the aforementioned analysis a supplementary analysis using the sectoral 
disaggregated dynamic macroeconomic model INFORGE developed by GWS mbH1 was also 
performed (Meyer, et al., 2007). In this model, in addition to the effects on production, value 
added and employment that results directly and indirectly from the interindustry 
interrelationships within the production process, indirectly induced effects can be estimated 
                                                 
1 Institute of Economic Structures Research (GWS) 
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from the multiplicative linkages of the income cycle. The partial redisbursement of the direct 
and indirect income earned in the course of the production process trigger a multiplier 
process which induces further production and employment. The model INFORGE contains a 
complex model structure, which simultaneously depicts the interindustry connections, the 
generation, distribution, and redistribution of income, as well as its use for the demand of 
goods (Distelkamp, et al., 2003). The simulation results show that tourism consumption of 
the private households in one year during a five-year analysis period can account for 6.9% of 
employment in the German economy overall, or more than 2.6 million employed persons.  
 
 The presented results to the contribution of tourism to employment in Germany show 
that by the extensive empirical realization of the TSA employment module many 
employment policy relevant facets, which distinguish the tourism industry of other industries 
strikingly, clearly become evident. The determined numbers of the TSA employment module 
offer a good starting point for developing economic recommendations.  Furthermore, for 
estimating the total employment impact of tourism activities its results can be perfectly 
applied in policy simulations on the basis of empirically founded structural models. 
 
 
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References  
Ahlert, G. (2003). Einführung eines Tourismussatellitensystems in Deutschland.  
Abschlussbericht zum Forschungsauftrag Nr.33/02 (EU-Projekt) des Bundesministeriums für 
 Wirtschaft und Arbeit (BMWA), Osnabrück.  
 
Ahlert, G. (2006): TSA-Ergebnisse zur volkswirtschaftlichen Bedeutung des Tourismus in 
 Deutschland. Tourismus Journal, 8(4), 519-532. 
 
Ahlert, G. (2007): Methodological aspects of preparing the German TSA, empirical findings 
 and initial reactions. Tourism Economics, 13(2), 275-287. 
 
Commission of the EC, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, United 
 Nations & World Trade Organization (2001). Tourism Satellite Account: 
 Recommended Methodological Framework. New York, Brussels.  
 
Distelkamp, M., Lutz, C., Meyer, B. & Wolter, M. I. (2003). Forecasting the Interindustry 
 Development of the German Economy: The Model INFORGE. GWS Discussion 
 Paper 2003/2, Osnabrück.  
 
Eurostat (2001). European Implementation Manual on Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA). 
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Heershap, N., de Boer, B., Hoekstra, R., van Loon, A. and Tromp, L. (2005). A Tourism 
 Satellite Account for the Netherlands: approach and results. Tourism Economics, 
 11(3), 393-409.  
 
Laimer, P. (2005). A TSA- Employment Module for Austria Employment in Tourism 
 Industries 2003. Paper presented at the WTO conference 2005, 3-6 October, Iguazu 
 Falls, Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay.  
 
Liberos, M. (2005). The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA): Information on Employment 
 derived from the assessment on the TSA implementation. Paper presented at the WTO 
 conference 2005, 3-6 October, Iguazu Falls, Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay. 
 
Meyer, B., Lutz, C., Schnur, P. & Zika, G. (2007). Economic Policy Simulations with Global 
 Interdependencies: A Sensitivity Analysis for Germany. Economic Systems Research, 
 19(1), 37-55.  
 
Miller, R. E., & Blair, P. D. (1985). Input-Output-Analysis: Foundations and Extensions. 
 Eaglewood Cliffs. 
 
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2000). Measuring the 
 Role of Tourism in OECD Economies, The Manual on Tourism Satellite Accounts 
 and Employment. Paris.  
 
Smeral, E. (2005). The Economic Impact of Tourism: Beyond Satellite Accounts. Tourism 
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Smeral, E. (2006). Tourism Satellite Accounts: A Critical Assessment. Journal of Travel 
 Research, 45(8), 92-98.  
 
 
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The Contribution of Tourism to Employment in Germany -Assessment within a TSA Employment Module and Impact Analysis

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The Contribution of Tourism to Employment in Germany -Assessment within a TSA Employment Module and Impact Analysis

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