A common methodological language for sustainable tourism
The Research and Monitoring Centre for Coastal and Maritime Tourism in the Eastern Mediterranean is built on a deliberate methodological choice: to align its measurement and monitoring work with the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST).
This is not a technical detail. Adopting a shared, internationally recognised statistical standard is what allows the data produced in different countries — by different statistical offices, ministries, observatories and research bodies — to be compared, aggregated and interpreted with confidence. Without that shared language, regional monitoring of coastal and maritime tourism is impossible.
What MST is
The Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (often abbreviated SF-MST or MST) is the global statistical standard for measuring the economic, social and environmental dimensions of tourism, developed under the leadership of UN Tourism in cooperation with the United Nations Statistics Division.
It was adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission at its 55th session (27 February – 1 March 2024). With its adoption, MST became the first new global statistical standard for tourism since the 2008 International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account framework. It is endorsed by the 193 Member States of the United Nations.
MST integrates and extends earlier international standards — most notably the System of National Accounts (SNA), the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) and the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) — into a single coherent framework that measures tourism along all three dimensions of sustainability.
Why RMCMED aligns with MST
In the Joint Statement signed in Messinia on 7 October 2024, the participating countries explicitly committed to:
"Develop a coherent methodological framework for measuring the impact of maritime and coastal tourism in coastal destinations from an economic, social and environmental perspective, in line with the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST)."
That commitment is the methodological backbone of the Centre. In concrete terms, alignment with MST allows RMCMED to:
- Speak the same statistical language as UN Tourism and national statistical systems, so that the data produced in the region can be read alongside, and integrated with, official tourism statistics.
- Measure the three dimensions of sustainability — economic, social and environmental — in an integrated way, rather than treating them as separate exercises.
- Compare destinations across countries on a like-for-like basis, which is essential for any genuinely regional monitoring system.
- Support evidence-based policy at national, regional and destination level, using indicators whose definitions are stable and internationally agreed.
From the global framework to the Eastern Mediterranean
MST is, by design, a general framework. Its application to a specific region and a specific tourism product — in our case, coastal and maritime tourism in the Eastern Mediterranean — requires careful methodological work: selecting and adapting indicators, defining the geographic scale of measurement (coastal destinations, island destinations, sub-national tourism regions), and establishing data sources and reporting cycles that are operationally realistic for partner countries.
This is the work of the Centre. It is carried out by the Research Directorate of the Hellenic Ministry of Tourism, in consultation with partner countries, the research community and UN Tourism, and is documented in the Centre's methodological framework (see Publications — The Framework).