CASE STUDY The search for meaningful tourism indicators: the case of the International Upper Great Lakes Study Daniel McCole a * and Marion Joppe b a Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, 480 Wilson Rd. Rm. 131, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; b University of Guelph Macdonald Stewart Hall, Room 101, 50 Stone Road EastGuelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 Canada (Received September 2013; final version received November 2013) The recent rise in evidence-based policy-making means tourism interests are increasingly impacted by policies informed by quantifiable data. With complex issues impacting stakeholders with differing and often competing interests, policy-makers sometimes commission large interdisciplinary studies to help synthesize the potential data that can be used to inform the policy-making process. To help manage the data generated by these studies, study leaders often set guidelines for the types of data that can be used to inform recommendations, often requiring quantitative indicators. However, because of the nature of tourism, and the difficulties associated with isolating tourism activity, the data requirements of these studies may favor other stakeholders who have interests in the policies resulting from these types of studies. This case study of the International Upper Great Lakes Study provides an example of a large multidisciplinary study that aimed to inform policies for managing water levels in the North American Great Lakes by examining the impacts of water-level fluctuations on six stakeholder groups, including tourism. In this case, the data requirements of the study prevented the tourism industry’s needs from being fully addressed in the final recommendations to policy-makers. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by examining the specific challenges that the tourism industry faces when evidence is required to inform the decisions of policy-makers. Keywords: tourism policy; tourism indicators; Great Lakes tourism; coastal tourism; water levels; monitoring; evidence-based policy-making Resumen El reciente incremento del desarrollo de políticas basadas en la evidencia significa que los intereses del turismo están cada vez más influidos por las políticas creadas a partir de datos cuantificables. Teniendo en cuenta aspectos complejos que impactan en grupos de interés con intereses dispares y, con frecuencia, en competencia, los responsables políticos encargan, en ocasiones, amplios estudios interdisciplinares para ayudar a sintetizar los datos potenciales que pueden ser utilizados en el proceso de creación de políticas. Para ayudar a gestionar los datos generados por estos estudios, sus líderes establecen a menudo directrices para los tipos de datos que pueden ser utilizados con el fin de alumbrar las recomendaciones, exigiendo, muchas veces, indicadores cuantitativos. Sin embargo, debido a la naturaleza del turismo, y a las dificultades asociadas con el aislamiento de la actividad turística, © 2014 Taylor & Francis *Email: mccoleda@msu.edu Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure & Events, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19407963.2013.877471