Introduction to Tourism

12 Tourism in developing countries

Introduction

For many of the poorer countries in the world tourism has become a major input to their development process. Although development is a concept which has many meanings, for most countries it is seen as being essentially a measure of economic progress. As such, most development indicators centre on changes in the gross domestic product (GDP), gross national income (GNP) or per capita incomes. It is recognized that these concepts are difficult to quantify, particularly in the developing world as statistical data is scarce and usually unreliable. Gross domestic product is a measurement of what is produced within the economy of a country. The concept of GDP per capita is simply the division of the GDP ...