Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Revisited - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 323

Despite some signs of change with regard to the territorial distribution
of tourism in Africa - principally related to the rapid growth of international
tourist arrivals in Mozambique - there has been little change with regard to
the fact that six countries account for 65-70% of the region's arrivals, not-
withstanding the fact that both South Africa's and Zimbabwe's arrivals fig-
ures are inflated by the vast number of migrant labourers who cross the borders
on a daily basis (see Harrison, 2001a: 15; UNWTO, 2011e: 9). More recently,
spurred by periods of relative political stability in parts of sub-Saharan Africa
along with increasing inward investment from China and other countries
outside the traditional capitalist heartlands, Africa's market share of interna-
tional tourist arrivals in 2012 reached 5%, and its share of international tour-
ism receipts 3% (UNWTO, 2013b). While still very low by international
standards, not least given the size of the continent, sub-Saharan Africa has
been one of the few regions to show consistent signs of growth in the midst
of the financial crisis centred in the advanced capitalist states of the OECD
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
The growth of business travel and inward FDI in these countries contin-
ues, however, to be concentrated in urban areas, particularly in capital cities
and the growing centres of regional capital accumulation in emergent econo-
mies. The geographical concentration of tourism in urban centres and a few
established coastal destination areas (e.g. Mombasa, Kenya) reinforces the
view that new investment tends to gravitate towards already established tour-
ism destinations with an existing infrastructure provision, a trained work-
force and, more often than not, amenable governments. 14 Elsewhere, despite
the diversification of international tourism into new destinations and the
rise of Brazil, the majority of international tourist arrivals in the Americas
remain concentrated in the US, Canada and Mexico, although their overall
share has fallen from 73% in 2007 to 65.4% in 2012 (UNWTO, 2011e, 2013b).
Meanwhile, India's emergence as a regional economic powerhouse and the
principal hub of tourism in South Asia can be partly attributed to policies of
economic liberalisation enacted since 1985, helping, in part, to fuel economic
growth rates in excess of 8% and further integrating India into the world
economy (Hannam & Diekmann, 2011: 4). Such is India's importance for
tourism that the WTTC opened a regional office in New Delhi in 2000
(www.wttc.org, 13 December 2000). India, of course, along with other 'semi-
industrialised' and emergent economies, has witnessed the steady growth of
its domestic hotel chains, such as the Tata Group, which operates 93 hotels
across 53 domestic locations in India under the Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces
brand, together with an additional 16 international hotels in the Maldives,
Malaysia, Australia, the UK, the US, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Africa and the
Middle East (www.tata.com, 31 August 2012).
Whilst the past two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the
role of transnational capital investments in tourism as ever more destinations
are integrated into global circuits of capital, 15 this does not represent the