Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
development or whether they reinforce each other and how important is the
general level of a country's development for tourism development and reach-
ing maturity.
Tourism and the balance of payments
As long ago as the 17th century, the mercantilist Thomas Mun was one
of the first to recognise tourism's potential influence on a country's balance
of payments (Planina, 1997: 58). Although the word 'tourism' had yet to enter
common usage at that time, the 'expenses of travailers' that influence the
'Balance' (Mun, 1664: 86) were nevertheless used to describe the impact of
international tourism on the balance of payments. Planina (1997: 61) main-
tains that tourism's impact on the balance of payments was also the first
tourism issue to become a matter of economic scientific debate in the 1920s.
More recently, in the first half of the 20th century and, in particular, during
the years of economic recession in the decade preceding World War II in
Europe, many economists were also concerned with the ability or potential
of international tourism to generate foreign currency earnings. At the same
time, many countries had adopted protectionist measures in order to increase
(incoming) tourism receipts and to decrease (outgoing) tourism expenditure,
demonstrating the importance of the receipt/expenditure impact of tourism,
even for developed countries. Thus, although the UN interceded against pro-
tectionism in tourism in 1936, governments have continued to promote
incoming tourism flows and destimulate outflows through economic con-
trols. For example, in 1966 the British government, concerned about the defi-
cit in the travel balance, limited the amount of domestic currency taken on
trips out of the country to £50 per day. As a result, British foreign tourism
expenditure decreased significantly and the tourism balance became positive.
Similarly, in 1968 the US attempted to discourage overseas travel for balance
of payments reasons. Although Congress refused to adopt the proposed mea-
sures that would have limited Americans' freedom to travel, the then presi-
dent nevertheless asked American citizens to reduce their foreign travels in
the forthcoming years and, in 1968, American overseas tourism expenditures
decreased. The tourism balance was thus reduced, aided by higher foreign
tourism earnings (Unkovic, 1985).
In comparison, overseas tourism expenditure by the Japanese rose when
they were encouraged by their government to travel more. Again, the reason
was to address an imbalance in the balance of payments, although, for Japan,
the problem was not a deficit but a surplus in foreign trade with the US and
Europe and tourism was seen as a particularly effective way of reducing the
country's international trade surplus (Polunin, 1989: 5). This has proved to
be a highly successful policy (see Burns, 1996). Not only has it evolved into
a '10 million programme', but subsequent agreements with Canada are
designed to encourage 2 million tourists from each country to visit the other.
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