New UNWTO-ITC-EIF report published
Tourism is a key trade development sector for many Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, the UNWTO together with the International Trade Center (ITC) and the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) has published a new open-access report on tourism, trade and economic development in LDCs. The study is aimed at making the most out of tourism’s potential to build better lives in LDCs, contributing not only to inclusive and sustainable development but also to security and enduring peace.
The report highlights that tourism is estimated to represent 10% of global GDP and generates directly or indirectly one in ten jobs globally. It is a resilient sector, which despite all challenges continues to see international tourist arrivals grow at an annual rate of over 4% since 2009. Generating 7% of all international trade (and 30% of trade in services), the sector is also of increasing importance to the trade community. Tourism is of particular value for least developed countries (LDCs), where it represents 7% of total exports of goods and services, a figure that stands at 10% for non-oil LDC exporters. Tourism is also the major economic earner in many small island developing states.
The Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) is helping to bridge the gap between demand and supply for Aid for Trade and to mainstream trade into national development plans of LDCs. The EIF uses diagnostic trade integration studies (DTIS) to evaluatee internal and external constraints on a country’s integration into the world economy and recommend areas where technical assistance and policy actions can help the country overcome these barriers. The new report assesses how trade-related technical assistance can contribute to enhancing tourism’s contribution to sustainable development in LDCs, and reviews 48 DTIS and their action matrices. 45 out of 48 analysed DTIS have tourism chapters or tourism references: 32 in Africa, six in Asia, one in the Americas, and six1 in the Pacific. Despite this, the DTIS is hardly or not at all used for communication with donors on tourism-related technical assistance, neither on the trade side nor on the tourism side.
Despite the importance of tourism for economic development of SDCs, between 2006 and 2013 only 0.09% of total official development assistance (ODA) and 0.4% of total Aid for Trade disbursements were reported by donor countries to be allocated for tourism. One reason identified in the report for a discrepancy between the high demand for trade-related technical assistance on tourism and the relatively modest response to this from the donor side is that trade and tourism tend to fall within different government ministries. A persisting disconnect between trade and tourism stakeholders at the country level, in the donor community and among implementing agencies makes it difficult to move from diagnostics to action.
It is also suggested that the tourism-related references in DTIS tend to focus on the economic facets of tourism and pay less attention to specific social and environmental aspects. Tourism-related needs expressed in the DTIS rarely target explicitly vulnerable communities and rarely pay attention to potential negative social or environmental side effects of tourism activities. Social and environmental aspects are important if assistance is to foster tourism that is sustainable. Closer collaboration between different stakeholders, including those in charge of environmental sustainability and poverty reduction could help.
The report provides guidance on how to design trade-related technical assistance for the tourism sector. It focuses on trade policies that promote prosperity for people and the planet, and contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To download the PDF, visit the ITC website. See below for a selection of database records on tourism and LDCs.