Message of the President
Dear TCI friends,
In a few weeks TCI will hold its first thematic conference on tourism clusters, an industry that is probably not the most familiar one for many cluster practitioners, or at least for those like me, who are used to looking at clusters mainly from an industry-centered point of view.
Despite the fact that it is quite hard to obtain precise data, tourism is certainly the economic activity that employs, directly and indirectly, most people around the world and, with rare exceptions, is present in almost all countries. According to World Tourism Organization, this industry has become one of the largest and fastest growing economic activities, expanding its business at an annual rate of 6.5% from 1950 to 2005, the number of travellers growing from 25 million to 806 million in the same period. The World Travel and Tourism Council, a lobby organization in the sector, estimates that the direct economic impact of the industry is around 5% of the world GDP and nearly 8% of world employment.
If tourism is very important per se, this industry becomes even more interesting when we analyze it under a "cluster perspective" when, for instance, we take into account its capacity for stimulating a wide array of supporting and related industries like, just to mention some, logistics and transport, food and drink, construction or habitat (a cross-sectoral industry including products like furniture, home textile, construction materials, etc.). Tourism also plays a very important role for its social value as a driver for socio-economic progress in many countries (see the article written by Tamara Vasquez in this newsletter), or as a vital asset for many island countries like Mauritius, Maldives, Jamaica or the Dominican Republic among many others.
Tourism is, moreover, one of the first economic sectors that became global. In fact, in the middle of last century the top 15 destinations absorbed almost 90% of international arrivals, but now this figure has dropped to less than 60% reflecting the inclusion of many new players, several of them in developing countries. I believe all these arguments are strong enough for envisaging a very interesting exchange of ideas and best practices among the TCI community and cluster practitioners that will meet in the Dominican Republic early next month.
Alberto Pezzi
TCI President
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