ABSTRACT

As an economic factor, tourism is growing faster than the rest of the world economy in terms of visitor expenditures, export output, capital investment, income and employment. The UNWTO has displayed the impact that international tourism has worldwide in ‘Tourism Highlights 2006 edition’ by summarizing International Tourist Arrivals (Table 4.1) and International Tourism Receipts (Table 4.2). Tourism is an important export product in both industrialized and less-

developed countries. However, the extent to which tourism contributes to a country’s foreign exchange earnings varies considerably. Case in point, the appreciation of several of the world’s currencies (i.e., the euro and Japanese yen) since 2004 in comparison to the depreciation of the US dollar attribute to this phenomenon, although overall receipts rose by 9per cent when expressed in terms of local currencies at constant prices. As evidenced from Table 4.2, the world’s economy is rebounding from the setbacks of previous years, most recently from the SARS epidemic of 2003 and the terrorists’ attacks of 11 September 2001.