​(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Travel and Tourism statistics will be in focus this week in Roseau, Dominica, as Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States continue to place greater emphasis on the development and use of statistics to respond to tourism and trade information needs.

The four-day Regional Workshop on Travel and International Tourism Consumption, hosted by the Central Statistics Office, Dominica, opens on Tuesday 14 May. It is organised by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the CARICOM Secretariat, and the World Tourism Organisation.

The workshop will focus on subjects such as the availability of travel and tourism statistics, tourism as an international traded service, classifications in tourism service and expenditure and consumption in the tourism sector. The institutional arrangements between national agencies; travel and tourism data compilation details; measuring employment in tourism statistics; and tourism satellite accounts, are among the other topics participants will consider during the workshop.

The workshop is being held as statisticians observe 2013 as the International Year of Statistics under the theme `Statistics in Everyday Life; Let us Educate and Appreciate’. The over-riding goals of the Year are to: increase public awareness of the power and far-reaching impact of statistics on all aspects of society; promote and nurture statistics as a profession, especially among young people; and promote creativity and development in the sciences of probability and statistics.