ABSTRACT

As the political climate changes and discussion of liberalisation intensifies, the involvement of the government in tourism policy – and especially in tourism marketing at the national level – has increasingly come to be called into question and challenged. As a political mega-trend of the twenty-first century, the pull-out of the government is seen in the context of the liberal economic doctrine as an all-purpose means of increasing economic performance, even when the government pulls out of its responsibilities in the production of public goods. In light of these tendencies, the effort will be made here to determine whether public involvement in tourism marketing – practically understood as the provision of financial support for activities related to tourism marketing – can be justified within the framework of liberal economic policy, and whether it is economically efficient. To compensate for the relative scarcity of literature on this topic, this paper relies primarily on the use of public economics tools. Organisational questions such as the legal form taken by national tourism organisations (NTOs) or the position occupied by public marketing departments in the relevant administrative hierarchies are not dealt with here.