Question

why is it difficult to measure tourism’s contribution to GDP?

Answer 1

“Tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes … tourism refers to all activities of visitors, including over-night visitors and same day visitors.”

There is no such thing as a tourism industry but it is major sector made up of many individual component Industries.

Within the tourism industries - transportation, accommodation, entertainment, retail, catering, and other activities- each has developed its own definitions, classifications and methodologies for data collection. The result is that there is little commonly understood or commonly usable communication of tourism statistics. Most attempts at the defining of tourism have revolved around the definition of the user - the so-called “tourist”. Each industry again describes the tourist user differently as guest, customer, passenger, visitor, client, and so on. Furthermore, in each of these industries tourism represents only part of the use of available capacity.

Because of this lack of understanding of tourism, the value and volume of its demand can be underestimated which can limit the full analysis of demand potential and consequent development.

And that's why it is difficult to measure tourism's contribution to GDP.