Tourism and its Economic Impact: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

<p style="text-align: justify;">Analyses of the current state of the tourist market, the contribution of international tourism to the countries&rsquo; economies, as well as the forecasts for the future development prospects are extremely important.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between tourism and GDP growth by applying different methods. To achieve it the following objectives have been set: (1) to investigate and summarize various methods of assessing the influence of tourism on economy; (2) to determine the status of the tourism sector in today&#39;s global economy and make a quantitative analysis of tourism&rsquo;s contribution to the GDP in the European region.; (3) to build an econometric model in order to find out which variables related to tourism have a greater influence on tourisms&rsquo; GDP. In order to achieve that, the panel data of 32 European countries for the period 2002-2012 was analyzed by using various tests. The data for this study was obtained from the World Bank and the World Council of Travel and Tourism databases.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The results of the study are the following. Firstly, I calculated the percentage of total and direct contribution to GDP/GVA growth for the following sample of the European countries: Cyprus, Slovenia, France, Finland, and Romania. Then, I proved the hypothesis about the existing relationship between tourism variables and tourisms&rsquo; GDP in the European region. The variables related to the number of tourist arrivals in the country, and trade in goods and services have the greatest positive effect on the GDP created in the tourism sector. &nbsp;It is worth mentioning that this research differs from the previous studies by focusing only on the European region.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Assessing the contribution of the tourism to the economy is quite a challenge, because today there is no common techniques and appropriate analysis tools. In addition, tourism being an intangible asset requires the use of special methodology, new sources of information and special data, as well as a comprehensive approach to the economic point of view.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>