A Total Requirements View of a Tourism and Hospitality Market is More Accurate Than Traditional Location Quotients

Abstract

The traditional use of location quotients to determine the cluster of local industries that produce products and services primarily for export is outdated in that it uses employment ratios only. A better approach uses the total dollars spent locally. Combined with absolute levels of employment, this research shows that the tourism and hospitality industry cluster is very different from those selected traditionally. Dollars-spent-locally uses data from local input–output tables and presents a more accurate profile of the interrelationships among tourism and hospitality industries. The authors illustrate this more accurate approach for one area using current cross-sectional industry data.