"Jordan has a growing and dynamic tourism sector which is a major contributor to the country’s economic development and foreign exchange earnings. With support from USAID’s Jordan Tourism Development Project, the country has carried out a detailed survey of the expenditures of inbound and outbound tourists, and is interested in building this into a system of Tourism Satellite Accounts, or TSA.

The TSA is a “satellite” to the national income accounts, the data systems that all countries use to track the activity of their economies and to calculate indicators such as gross domestic product and growth rates. The methodology for the System of National Accounts (SNA) has been developed over the past half-century through collaboration among statistical offices worldwide, the World Bank, the OECD, the European Community, and the United Nations Statistics Division.

Satellite accounts are used to organize statistics about themes that do not fit into the structure of the main body of the national accounts. The SNA is organized by industry sectors (using International Standard Industrial, or ISIC Codes) and by products (using the Central Product Classification, or CPC). The data in the SNA are all economic; that is, they are monetary values rather volumes, physical quantities, or other measures. Many topics of importance to the economy do not fit into this system, and thus cannot be measured within the SNA. Nevertheless it is important to study them in relation to the economy, in a statistical framework that can be linked to the national accounts so that links between them can be identified and analyzed. The concept of satellite accounting is a response to this needs. The TSA is one type of satellite accounts; others organize data on the environment, household activities, and other topics."
(Jordan Tourism Development Project -Siyaha-, 2007)