ABSTRACT
The tourism export-led growth (TLG) strategy remains the main reason for developing countries to allocate resources to tourism. The reasons are the same as those mentioned for the traditional export-led growth hypothesis competition on foreign markets leads to better management practices and forms of organization, to more labour training, to a pro-competitive effect on market structures, to increased capacity utilization. The most popular methodology for investigating tourism's contribution to economic growth is co integration and Granger causality tests. They test in their contribution the rate of growth of per capita income and the growth rate of receipts from international tourism. The essence of the methodology is the decomposition of economic growth, expressed as real per capita GDP growth, into growth attributable to tourism and to other industries. The lack of understanding is a serious issue, although the World Tourism Organization (WTO) has identified tourism as a key driver to combat poverty.
