Shifts in Tourism Knowledge: HEI Contributions to Destination Branding and Economic Development

Introduction

From an economic perspective, there is a growing interest in tourism due largely to its potential to positively impact economic growth (Selmi et al., 2021). The industry is described by Guan et al. (2022) as vulnerable to crisis events not only making forecasting and analysis complex but causing significant upheaval as one of the most severely affected sectors during the Covid-19 pandemic (Hassan & Soliman, 2021) resulting in a decline by USD910 billion in the year 2020 (UNWTO, 2024). Although vulnerable to crisis, the travel and tourism industry has proven itself to be resilient with an industry contribution to gross domestic product internationally in 2022 of approximately USD7.7 trillion, or 7.6 percent of the overall global GDP (Statista, 2023) and despite being one of the most severely affected industries during the pandemic years, international tourism ended the 2023 year at 88% of pre-pandemic levels.

Global pandemic notwithstanding, tourism has shown sustainable growth over several decades (Wan & Song, 2018) reflecting demand by consumers for more and different consumer goods and services (Sofronov, 2018). The subsequent creation of increased demand for tourist services has resulted in ongoing development of economic and educational programmes to support and direct tourism programmes. So, the industry appears to be currently flourishing and continuing its growth journey in developing and developed countries as one of the fastest growing sunrise industries in the world generating new sources of revenue and long-term economic growth and development (Selmi et al., 2021; Soliman, 2015).

The impact of tourism is not uniform across all countries. The argument that tourism should be considered to stimulate economic growth has been made in many global organisations (Cardenas-Garcia et al., 2015) with Balaguer and Cantavella-Jorda’s (2002) paper considered to be the seminal study formalising the unidirectional tourism-led-growth hypothesis (TLGH) suggesting an empirical and theoretical nexus linking economic growth and tourism. The capacity to facilitate economic growth relates to the ability to provide foreign income and employment opportunities for locals, an imperative to protect and improve in-country infrastructure and to positively impact the balance of payments (Ehigiamusoe, 2020) leading to the implication that tourism plays an important role in determining economic growth (Gao et al., 2021). Unidirectional causality running in the opposite direction (i.e. economic development drives tourism) is a second strand of research described as the economic-driven tourism growth (EDTG) hypothesis (Gao et al., 2021). This theory suggests that when a developing country with a less developed tourism sector expands economically and makes improvements in tourism infrastructure, personal safety, and education, growth in international tourism follows (Narayan, 2004; Oh, 2005; Paramati et al., 2017; Tang & Jang, 2009). Bidirectional relationships have also been found in a number of studies confirming the interdependence of economic growth and tourism (Lee & Chang, 2008, Ridderstaat et al., 2014). Finally, a neutral relationship between tourism and economic growth has been found in a small number of studies (Kasimati, 2011; Katircioglu, 2009). This relationship between tourism and economic growth has attracted a plethora of research attention over several years, frequently resulting in inconsistent and sometimes conflicting results (Aratuo & Etienne, 2019).