ABSTRACT
National tourism planning in Tunisia Tunisian development has been guided for many years by a succession of fiveyear National Development Plans with the most recent-the eighth-due to terminate at the end of 1997. The development of tourism has been an integral and increasingly significant element within these plans, as the role of tourism within the Tunisian economy has become more central and as the scale of the industry has increased from a mere 50,000 foreign visitors in 1962 to more than 3 million visitors in 1990. The Tunisian National Development Plans conform largely to the master plan concept insofar as a major element in the planning approach is the designation of targets for growth and investment. For example, the Seventh National Development Plan (1986-91) set the following targets for tourism: • bed spaces to increase by 19 per cent to 118,000; • bed occupancy to increase by 42 per cent to 18 million bed-nights; • direct employment to increase by 13 per cent to 46,000; • cumulative investment to increase by 72 per cent to 1,243 million Tunisian
dinars (approximately £777 million); • annual tourism receipts to increase by 104 per cent to TD 797 million (£498
million). Whilst much of the actual provision to support these targets was expected to come from private-sector investments, direct government intervention contributed significantly to the realisation of the plan objectives via a number of pathways. These included:
• investment in infrastructure (especially transportation); • promotion and marketing (which has been particularly important following
recession in the 1980s and a temporary slump following the Gulf War); • training programmes (which had previously established training schools in
all the regions and, under the Seventh Plan, added a new hotel school at Monastir);
• regional initiatives aimed at diversification of the tourism product and development of new tourism areas.
