Economics of tourism & growth for small island countries

We theoretically analyze the impact of changes in foreign income from tourism source countries on the growth of tourism dependent small island economies. Using a general theoretical construct, we attempt to answer the question of how price elasticity of demand, income elasticity of tourist and the degree of competition in the service sector influence the economic development of small economies. One of the main results is that politicians may consider applying policies which lead to a competitive environment in the service sector to maximize growth and the consequent labor income share.     

Rural tourism development in Lithuania (2003–2010) — A quantitative analysis

The objectives of the Rural Development Programme for Lithuania for the period 2007 to 2013 are to: (a) preserve natural and cultural heritage objects, (b) support complementary activity in the rural areas, and (c) generate rural tourism as an economic sector. The aim of this study is to identify current trends specific to the Lithuanian rural tourism sector and propose potential means of development. This study focuses on an inter-county assessment of rural tourism flows within Lithuania by the means of an index decomposition analysis. Consequently, an analysis was undertaken covering factors including the number of the rural tourism farmsteads, spatial distribution of those farmsteads, and capacity, an amended Defert Index, and duration of stay effects. The analysis suggests that the Lithuanian rural tourism sector was negatively affected by the 2008 recession. Indeed, the impacts exhibited relatively high elasticity of demand for rural tourism. Hence, there is a need for the further development of appropriate marketing and information dissemination strategies aimed at both middle and lower income consumers.     

中国收入分配结构演变对国内旅游消费的影响

国内旅游是成熟旅游业的主体，其发展与经济水平高度相关。本文从居民收入及其分配结构演变角度，对20年来中国国内旅游消费及其特征进行理论性分析。     

Tourism and inequality: A relook on the Kuznets curve

The study explores the impact of the tourism industry on income inequality upon a panel set of countries, classified in accordance with their levels of economic development. The countries are classified into three clusters based on their per capita GDP, the volume of international trade, and foreign direct investment inflows. The income inequality was measured using the GINI score. The long-run relationship between tourism receipts and GINI income inequality was explored for a panel set of forty-one countries over the period 1995 to 2016. The study concludes that earnings from tourism have varying impacts on the three clustered sets of countries. The inequality index of the highly developed countries remains unaffected by the earnings from tourism. The developed countries show Kuznets curve behaviour as far as the relationship between tourism and inequality is concerned. The developing countries exhibit an inverted Kuznets curve behaviour between tourism receipts and inequality of income.     

Tourism in Mauritius: an economic impact study with marketing implications

Tourism impact analysis is traditionally used to measure the volume of income, employment, public sector revenue and imports generated in a holiday area by tourist spending and to calculate the differential impacts made by visitors from various origins. This article on Mauritius shows how such analysis can provide useful marketing information to help maximize the economic impact of tourism in a small-island economy.     

Networking for sustainable tourism – towards a research agenda

This paper proposes a research agenda for networking for sustainable tourism research based on a collaborative workshop of international tourism academics and researchers and an extensive review of the relevant literature. Each year, Building Excellence in Sustainable Tourism – an Education Network (BEST EN) holds a Think Tank on a topical issue in sustainable tourism education. One aim of the Think Tank is to develop a relevant research agenda that draws on the collective knowledge of participants and acknowledges the interdependent economic, environmental and social objectives in sustainable tourism. Six main areas were identified as important for a research agenda on networking for sustainable tourism and its implementation: theory, methodology and conceptual issues; actors, culture and power; lifecycle, evolution and dynamics of networks; knowledge transfer; macro-perspectives and strategic action, vision, innovation and management of networks. This paper presents and discusses these research themes in the context of a literature review on networks and networking for sustainability in tourism. It is found that substantial progress has been made in the investigation of private sector networks at the destination levels; research on networks involving public sector stakeholders and networks across sectors and levels of governance, however, remains limited.     

The impact of ethnic tourism on hill tribes in Thailand

This research examines how the economic benefits of working in the ethnic tourism industry affect households in the local minority community, with a special focus on the division of labor and power dynamics of gender complementarity.Household income data gathered from the inner-city communities of the Akha tribal people in Thailand are the primary data used in a linear regression framework. The results show that ethnic tourism provides income to the local minority community. This income, however, is higher for young people and women than for older men, a disparity that disrupts the community’s traditional patriarchal social system. This study contributes to a nested model of multiple marginalization based on ethnicity, gender, and legal status. This case shall contribute to tourism planning and local policymaking in areas where ethnic tourism prospers.     

Examining the link between meetings,incentive, exhibitions,and conventions (MICE) and tourism demand using generalized methods of moments (GMM): the case of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the impact of meetings, incentive, exhibitions, and conventions (MICE) on tourism demand in Singapore over a period of 10 years (2003–2012). Past studies have shown that MICE matters a great deal to host destinations but researchers have rarely conducted any empirical research to verify the significance of this sector to tourism demand. Our study intends to fill the gap by using Difference and System generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimators for dynamic panel models. Tourism demand is measured by tourist arrivals from the top 30 origins, and the influence of real income of the tourist generating country and real exchange rate is also examined. The GMM results show a significant positive relationship between tourism demand and MICE (with international meetings as proxies). Additionally, the findings reveal that tourism demand growth is significantly positive (negative) with respect to changes in income (relative prices). The coefficient of lagged tourist arrivals indicates a high level of habit persistence and revisiting.     

A comparison of the moderating effect of tourism reliance on the economic development for islands and other countries

Tourism is usually one of the top industries in most countries, especially islands. However, there is some question as to whether there is a negative potential impact if a country relies too much on tourism as a means of economic development to the detriment of other industries such as manufacturing and agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of tourism reliance on the relationship between tourism development and economic development for regular countries and island economies, including “small island developing states” (SIDS). This study uses quantile regression on panel data from the WDI database from 1995 through 2014 for all of the countries that report tourism and economic data. The findings demonstrate that tourism reliance does have a moderating effect on the relationship between tourism development and economic development for all countries, but mainly at higher levels of economic development.     

Does tourism affect the informal sector?

The effect of tourism on economic growth has largely been investigated in the literature. However, it is still poorly understood about how the impact of tourism on the size of the informal economy. The present study attempts to fill the research gaps in this field, and thus applies panel regression techniques to examine the relationship between tourism development and the size of the underground economy across 96 countries over the period 2000–2007. The estimation results show that tourism exhibits a U-shaped relation with informality. Specifically, the share of informal sector first decreases in the early stages of tourism development and then increases as tourism continues. Some policy implications, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed.     

Foreign tourism in Greece: An economic analysis

Foreign exchange earnings are vital for developmental efforts, particularly in the industrial sector. However, Greece's visible exports alone do not generate sufficient income for such purposes, thus providing a strong justification for blending tourism into the country's general economic development strategy. From a development perspective, foreign exchange earnings are only one aspect of the total economic picture; eg the development of an export industry has varying repercussions on income, employment and other economic activity. The extent of these effects will vary according to the linkages between industrial sectors. This article assesses the importance of tourism to the Greek economy in terms of its impact on foreign exchange earnings and the balance of payments. Tourism's contribution to gross domestic product, employment and other economic activity is also examined.     

If you dig it, they will come!: Archaeology heritage sites and tourism development in Belize, Central America

Tapping into a growing global tourism market, in recent years the Government of Belize has been marketing and promoting tourism as its primary economic sector. The latest efforts have included the cruise ship sector and marketing Mayan cultural history for tourism. Three phases of Mayan excavation can be identified: (1) pre-mid-1990s when sites were scientific exercises with tourism following; (2) the 1990s to present with the archaeological digs such as at Caracol fostering tourism development as the project is undertaken; and, (3) future sites yet to be excavated. This paper explores the positive and negative impacts of developing Mayan sites for tourism in Belize. The results are based on a survey of face-to-face interviews conducted with tourists based in San Ignacio, a community in west-central Belize. San Ignacio is adjacent to the Cahal Pech archaeological site and within a short drive of the Xunantunich and Caracol sites. Caracol is only partially excavated with temporary infrastructure providing access to tourists. In fact, the income generated from this access pays for continued excavations. The findings indicate that while there are obvious educational and economic benefits for such development, there are also concerns about how much is too much.     

Dynamic relationship between tourism,economic growth,and environmental quality

Abstract

In the recent era of globalisation, the tourism sector is growing rapidly and stimulates economic growth across the world, however, the inevitable environmental consequences of tourism cannot be ignored. For sustainable tourism, it is necessary to understand the interrelationship between economic growth, tourism, and environmental quality. Hence, the objective of the current research is to investigate the dynamic relationship between tourism, economic growth, and CO₂ emissions from 1995 to 2014 in the context of BRICS economies. A group of econometric tests robust to heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence is applied to achieve accurate and unbiased results. Empirical findings propose that tourism sector significantly encourages economic growth; however, tourism degrades the quality of the environment. Also, globalisation has a long-term relationship with economic growth but an insignificant relationship with CO₂ emissions. The long-term elasticities further recommend that investment stimulate economic growth and mitigate CO₂ emissions. Moreover, environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) holds in BRICS countries in its significance to tourism and globalisation. Finally, a heterogeneous panel non-causality test detects bi-directional causality between tourism receipts and CO₂ emissions. Moreover, tourism and investment in tourism Granger cause each other. Empirical findings direct towards important policy implications.     

Input‐output analysis and income distribution patterns of the tourism industry in South Korea

This study estimates the economic effects of the tourism industry in South Korea by using the Input‐Output Model in terms of output, income, employment, value added, indirect tax, and import The distribution of income is also examined in the tourism industry among various social classes using the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient The results show that the tourism industry performed better than most of other industries in terms of generating employment and tax revenues. The tourism industry also performs better in terms of minimizing leakage, but more poorly in terms of the linkage effect as compared to the majority of other industries. The Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve show that the tourism industry performs moderately well in the distribution of income among household income classes as compared to the majority of other industries.     

Tourism's contribution to the Yugoslav economy

Tourism is an important sector of the post-industrial economies of the developed nations. This article concentrates on the contribution of tourism to the balance of payments in Yugoslavia. Current methods of assessing the value of tourism transactions are inadequate and make international comparisons impossible. The complexity involved in defining ‘tourism’ has led to the accumulation of meaningless data. The IMF's standard balance-of-payments model is described, and the ways in which Yugoslavia's measurements of tourism income and expenditure could be standardized according to IMF recommendations and thus become use- ful in economic policy formulation.     

Mediation Between Tourism Contribution and Economic Growth in the Greater Mekong Subregion

The objective of this paper is to determine the mediation between tourism contribution and economic growth in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) (i.e. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam). The sample period is semi-annual data from 1995 to 2013 and is also estimated by bootstrap panel cointegration, Panel Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares method and the Sobel test. The results show that the variables are cointegrated as three models; economic growth is running to tourism's total contribution to GDP and international tourism expenditure for passenger transport whereas international tourism expenditure for passenger transport is running to tourism's total contribution to GDP. Therefore, this study finds that international tourism expenditure for passenger transport is a mediator and has partial mediation. The GMS needs to develop every economic sector and improve the potential of the transport sector as a regional integration project which supports the sustainable development of the region.     

旅游发展会影响居民消费吗?——来自中国的经验证据

文章构建了两个衡量旅游发展的代理指标,运用动态面板数据系统广义矩估计方法对旅游发展、经济增长与居民消费之间的关系进行了实证研究.研究结果显示,在中国整体层面上,旅游发展对居民消费具有显著正向影响关系,然而这种正向关系的影响效应较小；旅游发展滞后项并不显著,意味着旅游发展对居民消费促进作用的动态持续效应并不明显,导致在一定时间段内旅游发展对居民消费呈倒U型的影响关系.在区域层面上,东部地区旅游发展对居民消费具有显著正向影响关系；中部地区同样存在上述正向影响关系,但估计结果显示这种关系并不十分稳健；西部地区旅游发展对居民消费影响关系则不显著.针对上述问题,最后提出了相应的政策建议.     

Caribbean tourism — economic development

This report has been prepared by the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Centre (CTRC) in order to focus attention on the contribution made by tourism to economic growth and development in the Caribbean, and also to encourage governments and donor agencies to allocate greater resources to research, product development, marketing and training for this most important economic sector. CTRC is an intergovernmental regional tourism research and development agency whose main aim is to promote tourism as a vehicle for the socioeconomic development of the Caribbean region.     

Business resilience in times of growth and crisis

Natural disaster, economic recession and political turmoil pose major challenges to local tourism in developing countries. To address such challenges, this article investigates the multiple ways in which local tourism businesses respond to crises and the resources these businesses employ to build resilience in an unpredictable business environment. The data underlying this article have been generated in a longitudinal study of small-scale businesses in the accommodation sector in the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Based on qualitative research, comprising ethnographic methods, the study reveals that local tourism businesses show remarkable resilience during the decade of crisis that affected the Indonesian tourism industry. This resilience has to be understood in terms of the businesses’ embeddedness in a package of livelihood strategies.     

The effect of international tourism on economic development: An empirical analysis

The expansion of international tourism in developing countries is generally considered to promote their economic development. In this paper, the impact of international tourism on economic development is modelled using an aggregate production function framework. It specifically investigates intersectoral externalities and marginal factor productivity differences between the international tourism sector and the rest of the economy. The net effect of international tourism on GDP per capita is examined via an empirical analysis of 37 developing economies. The results indicate that international tourism may positively affect economic development in these countries.