The Collapse and Recovery of World’s Tourism Industry during the Global Recession

Abstract

[eng] We analyze and compare the tourism industry’s speed of recovery from the crisis in 2008 in Europe, North America and Asia. To assess T&T situation in every continent, we use other variables the abundant literature does not use commonly: international tourism receipts, tourism contribution to GDP, tourist stay length and public and private investment in tourism assets. International Tourism Receipts (ITR) represents all expenditure by international visitors in a destination including transport services. Since it is difficult to record the cost of every service, product or activity a tourist enjoys, the accuracy of ITR figures will not precisely reflect the performance of the tourism industry. International inbound tourists are easier to record with more precision. For this reason, many academics resort to this variable to analyze T&T evolution. However, the findings of our paper show that considering only tourist arrivals to evaluate tourism is not accurate either. Therefore, we carry a more complex study of T&T industry in the aforementioned continents and we also dedicate one section in particular to delving deeper into the situation of Spain’s T&T industry.