Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.13:
Growth off international
visitor expenditure diture 1950-2002
Source:
based on WTO data
powerful economic effect of tourism for countries. Since 2000, the rate of growth slowed,
especially with 9/11 and the terrorist threats that explains the −2.9 per cent drop on 2000
expenditure, which rose by 3.2 per cent in 2002 as confidence spending on international
travel increased. Table 2.4 outlines the top tourism destinations for 1980 and 1990, where
the ranking of France has remained prominent throughout the 22-year period, with certain
developing nations such as China recording major growth and, with the exception of the
USA and China, Europe still dominates the pattern of arrivals by country with
comparatively little change in the ranking of the first seven destinations. However, China
is the notable success story in terms of growth in inbound arrivals and was ranked fifth in
terms of receipts from international arrivals in 2002. As the world's largest tourism
markets by expenditure, the USA and Spain have retained their prominence in the top
two rankings, followed by France, Italy, China, Germany, the UK, Austria, Hong Kong
and Greece as world earners of tourism receipts in 2002.
Future trends in the geography of international tourism to 2020
The WTO also produces future growth scenarios for world tourism, based on existing
patterns and past trends in growth, to extrapolate to the future using forecasting methods
which economists use from the area known as econometrics (see Frechtling 1996 for
more detail). These are interesting to the geographer as they make assumptions and
predict where tourist growth is likely to occur in time and space. The WTO reported these
findings in its
Tourism 2020
report, which is a long-term forecast assessment using 1995
as the base year and making forecasts for 2010 and 2020. As the period of growth
examined is up to 25 years in length, short-term fluctuations such as rapid growth are
often followed by short-term downturns and slower growth rates in arrivals, which has
tended to compensate and smooth out growth rates over the forecasting periods in the
past. As a result, WTO suggests that globally, international tourism will grow from 565
million arrivals in 1995 to 1 billion in 2010 to 1.5 billion in 2020. These growth rates will
have spatially distinct implications for where the growth is expected to occur. WTO
expects that in 2020 the top three receiving regions will be Europe (717 million arrivals),
