An increasing interest in the impact of sporting mega-events on host regions has sparked discussion on the most appropriate approaches in determining both bene®ts and costs. The paper de®nes the nature of the impact on Wales of the 1999 Rugby World Cup (RWC99), both economic and social, and qualitatively assesses the extent and nature of the impact of RWC99 in a number of areas. It concludes that there were considerable bene®ts for the region, although many areas of potential bene®t were not maximised. This was due in large part to the structure of the bidding process and organisational inadequacies, which in turn led to relatively low spectator spend and mixed press coverage.

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Tourism increasingly features in strategic regional policy documents, being considered important to regional economic prospects. Consequently many regions, notably those less prosperous, have expended significant resources in developing tourism attractions, promoting tourism events and supporting tourism-based operations. In this resource context, the difficulties in assessing the economic contribution of this diverse (and often atomised) set of activities are of concern. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and others have suggested Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSAs) as a suitable method of providing consistent economic evaluation of tourism-based activity. Yet the provision of an accurate and reliable set of accounts, which informs policy decisions and resource directions, is far from easy. This paper examines some of the methodological difficulties in constructing a TSA at the regional level and implications for deriving an effective tourism policy.

This article demonstrates how selected environmental consequences of tourism consumption relating to carbon emissions and waste can be quantified using a tourism satellite account (TSA), and an environmental module associated with an input-output framework. We move beyond the basic identification of the environmental effects of tourism consumption and seek to measure them. We show the types of information that can be derived from the framework, the applicative difficulties of reconciling tourism consumption to environmental outcomes, and explore the practical usage of the framework adopted. We believe that steps taken in the case to examine selected environmental effects of tourism consumption have a universal relevance for tourism policy makers.