The role of Government in
encouraging tourism
The key questions
• Why would governments want to promote
tourism?
• How might they go about promoting
tourism?
Why would governments promote
tourism?
• Tourism is a major foreign revenue earner
• Tourism provides lots of jobs
• It can act as a means of regional and local
regeneration
• Tourism can help support a national interest in
the environment and heritage resources
• Tourism can act as a means for improving and
extending the physical infrastructure
• Tourism can help increase awareness of a
country in an international context
What can governments do?
• Influence the rate of tourism
• Influence the type of tourists that visit their
country
• Influence the location of developments
• Influence the relative roles of:
– the public and private sector
– Multinational tourism and community based
tourism
How can they influence tourism?
MONITOR
IMPACT
IMPLEMENT
DECISION
AIMS
TOURISM &
OBJECTIVES
PLANNING
DATA COLLECTION
& ANALYSIS
MAKE A
DECISION
EVALUATE
OPTIONS
What might they actually do?
• Improve infrastructure in the form of roads, airports and
services
• Provide training opportunities for key personnel such as
hotel administration, tourist office management or market
research
• Develop planning controls, for example on the number,
quality and type of hotels that may be built in an area
• Pass/amend legislation regarding visas and entry for
tourists
• Regulate exchange rates to encourage spending by tourists
• Control revenue from tourists via taxes, e.g. airport tax,
tourist tax, “bed tax” etc
• Control work permits for foreign workers involved in the
tourist or related industries
Spread effects
• Most governments would be keen to encourage the spread of
economic and other benefits as widely as possible throughout the
economy:
TOURIST SPENDING
DIRECT: payment for local goods,
food, accommodation, transport &
souvenirs
INDIRECT: recipients spend money
e.g. hotelier buys his food from
local shops and markets
INDIRECT EFFECT: further spending by
local people who directly and indirectly
receive money from tourism e.g. the wife
of a waiter in a hotel buys clothes from
local shops