The Tourism Industry Orienteering Towards the Achievement of SDGs at the Country Level

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been developed by UN in 2015 with the aim to achieve a sustainable balance by 2030. Among these, 8 and 12 SDGs contain several indicators to analyze the level of sustainability implementation in tourism sector. Particularly, this industry has experienced a steady growth in demand, yet causing environmental and social impacts. For this reason, this study aims to assess at country level three standard frameworks (Tourism Satellite Accounts – TSA, System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – SEEA and Tourism Gross Domestic Product – TGDP) involved in 8 and 12 SDGs. Particularly, the methodology, based on Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach, consisted into a general goal, four research questions and six metrics for evaluating the sustainability implementation at country level and the investigation period was 2016-2019 and it referred to 156 world countries. Moreover, through TGDP per country, according to 8.9.1 indicator, and TSA and SEEA, according to 12.b.1 indicator, the authors analyze the level of sustainability achieved at country level. The results showed that tourism industry was receiving particular attention from countries, but there is a need for greater awareness at the country level to disclose the instruments implemented and the levels of sustainability achieved.