گردشگری و توسعه اقتصادی: کدام سرمایه گذاری تولید سود برای مناطق مناسب تر است؟

Across three decades numerous metropolitan regions have made substantial investments in different tourist amenity packages. These investments were made to either capture a portion of the growing tourism market or establish an image that attracted the human capital needed to advance economic development. This article analyzes the returns for the tourism industry and for economic development from different amenity packages and finds those related to sports and amusements generated the most significant gains for regions.

Tourism's growth across the second-half of the 20th century and even in the years after the September 11th terrorist attacks continues at an astonishing pace. The World Tourist Organization (WTO) estimated that in 1950 25 million tourists visited other countries. That number grew to 842 million in 2006 illustrating the enormous interest in international travel despite the attacks of September 11th, devastating bombings in London, Spain, and India, and other incidents of terrorism. The Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (OTTI) estimated that all forms of tourism produced more than $700 billion in direct output and $1.2 trillion in total output for the US economy in 2006. The scale of tourism and its growth has attracted the interest of a large number of state/provincial and local government officials who have tried to determine if their communities could capture a larger portion of this economic activity. There has been even greater interest from regions with little population growth, shrinking employment levels, and images as declining areas. Leaders in many of these slow-growth or declining communities – influenced, in part, by the work of Richard Florida (2002) – have invested scarce resources in tourism, sports, and entertainment complexes. These areas hope that revitalized downtown areas and upscale amenities will also appeal to highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs who create or attract new businesses. A focus on tourism replete with the building of entertainment and cultural amenities to attract the human capital needed to propel economic growth and visitors has become a policy staple for most cities and regions (Eisinger, 2000).

Do investments in tourism create jobs and generate regional economic growth? At least three factors have driven the focus on tourism for economic development in numerous cities. First, given the extraordinary growth of the industry across the past 50 years there has been a level of competition to seize a larger share of this growing market. Areas that are already home to tourist attractions are engaged in policies to enhance their infrastructure to insure that tourism levels remain robust. Even among giant tourist centers such as Orlando, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada there are new investments made each year in a constant re-invention process. Second, for slow-growth cities, for cities in areas frequently described as “rust-belt,” and for cities without positive national and international impressions, the focus on tourism has been coupled to efforts to produce different images and attract the human capital necessary to expand their economies. The building of numerous tourist and entertainment venues has been justified by the view that amenities will advance regional economic development and change the image or declining areas. Third, amenities are important factors in the attraction and retention of the human capital that drive the 21st century's economy. While it is not clear if amenities will attract human capital, the absence of amenities does reduce a region's attractiveness to workers. Leaders in declining regions need to understand which, if any, amenity packages are more likely to be associated with growing levels of employment. If public money is to be invested in amenities those funds should be targeted to those assets that are associated with improving development levels. Regions cannot rely on amenities to drive economic development but the absence of desired facilities can thwart economic expansion.