Fourth International Conference on Tourism and Leisure Studies

Abstract

There are many countries that have opted for tourism as dynamizing element of the economy, and, consequently, as a politics that allow to improve the socioeconomic development. Besides, scientific literature has demonstrated the existence of a relationship between tourism and economic development by revealing, in some cases, that tourism activity may allow to improve the life conditions of residents. On the other hand, in order to get an increase at the arriving tourist flow to the destination regions and, therefore, an expansion of the tourism activity, various factors are required. In turn, these variables determine the level of economic development. While it is true that a tourism expansion can be used as a tool for economic development, it is also true that a higher level of socioeconomic development of the destination can ease the tourism activity expansion. Thus, it may exist a bidirectional relation between both dimensions. This statement has received little attention by the scientific literature, which have been analyzing widely the bilateral relation between tourism and economic growth, tourism-led economic growth (TLEG) and economic-driven tourism growth (EDTG), but it has not been studied the relation between economic growth and economic development, in the same way. Thus, the aim of this paper consists in analyzing the bidirectional relation that exists between the tourism activity growth and the economic development through an empirical study at country level, by using a broad sample of 143 countries and its quantitative information during last two decades.