Abstract
The prevailing discourse relates the widespread belief that an increase in the volume of tourist arrivals is a clear sign of success for tourism destination managers. According to a logarithmic regression function that estimates the inverse demand-income elasticity, it has been found that tourism flows are not the best measure to use in assessing the contribution of tourism to economic growth. Rather, the volume of income that is generated from these tourists should be considered. Furthermore, based on an analysis of correlations, it was found that the territories having the greatest efficiency in generating income from tourism are more competitive in terms of tourism. The results obtained may contribute to changing the approach used by both private and public bodies, and they may also help them to re-focus their business planning and policymaking so as to emphasize an increase in income level and not in volume of tourists.
Highlights
Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of tourism as an instrument of economic growth
In an initial consideration of the two data series analyzed in this article for the 93 countries in the sample, the percentage variation for both variables has been calculated for the period between 2010 and 2015
The results demonstrate that, while in the majority of countries (49 of the 93, or 52%) the increase in income from tourism was higher than the increase in international tourist arrivals, and a very large percentage of countries had income from tourism that increased at a lower rate than the international tourist arrivals between 2010 and 2015 (48% of the countries in the sample)
Summary
Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of tourism as an instrument of economic growth. What is not so clear, (and what, until recently, was considered an undisputed fact), is the role of tourism as an instrument of development This relationship has generated increasing debate within the scientific literature, as demonstrated by some recent studies [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. This role has been recognized, assuming that a series of circumstances exists that favor the transformation of tourism growth into economic development [13]; but these circumstances do not always exist. In the prevailing discourse of politicians, policymakers and tourism managers, an increase in this variable is the most frequently used data to justify their actions
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