The Economic Structure of World Tourism

The economic development of world regions has been linked increasingly to tourism development and particularly to the volume of tourist arrivals. International tourism is a form of trade that represents exports as tourist arrivals. Particular countries have been more or less successful in developing tourism exports and imports. It has been assumed sometimes that most world regional international tourism flows from the developed to the underdeveloped world and forms a process of foreign exchange income from developed to underdeveloped economies. This paper examines the question of which countries are linked economically in world tourism and, more importantly, analyses the structure of this linkage