A big part of a country’s exports come from service in the travel industry and tourism. In some cases such as the UK it can account for more than half the exports of others services in the country, according to new research conducted by the World Travel and Tourism Council and World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). This goes to show how important work in the travel sector is.
Exports of visitors to a country such as the UK (money spent by foreign visitors in a country) amounted to more than 69.5 billion dollars (52.2 billion euros) in 2014, which is 53% of all exports of services from the country according to a study released by the WTTC.
In addition, Travel and Tourism in UK directly holds more than twice as many jobs as the financial services sector, maintaining 2.7 million jobs or about 16% of total employment of the UK in 2014.
According to the report, Travel and Tourism has strong links with other sectors through their supply chains. Thus for the industry to flourish, the other sectors need to flourish too. More specifically, the ties with the fields of agriculture and education become stronger.
An interesting example that proves this point is the railway networks of the UK. Recently, a national training academy has opened which aims to grow the country’s infrastructure and create new job positions. This does not only help with unemployment but also provides the necessary education in order to further improve the travel sector.
It is expected that the contribution of Travel & Tourism to the GDP of a country will grow at an annual average rate of 2.5% in the next ten years, faster than the overall growth of the economy which is estimated to increase by 1.9% annually over the next decade.
This research confirms the importance of Travel & Tourism in a country for the economic growth it offers.Therefore, it is crucial that countries remain focused on Travel and Tourism in their national policies and invest in infrastructure and human capital for sectors associated with it in order to maximize thetourism potential.”