ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a number of economic characteristics of the tourism sector. Colloquially, free time, leisure, recreation, travel and tourism are used synonymously and are almost interchangeable. Many natural attractions are free goods, or only need marginal investments to make them operational. Colloquially, travel is often used as a substitute for tourism – indeed, Mieczkowski makes the humorous remark that a World Tourism Organization (WTO) publication is called World Travel in English, and Tourisme Mondiale in French. Indeed, part of tourism is associated particularly with working time, including business meetings and conventions. Tourism has a number of typical economic characteristics which influence to a large extent the economics of tourism or lead to special methods of measurement and economic impact analysis.
