Proceedings of the 12th Meeting of
The COMCEC Tourism Working Group
3
2. The COMCEC Tourism Outlook
Dr. Gurel CETIN, consultant from the COMCEC Coordination Office and scholar at Istanbul
University, has presented some of the key developments of tourism industry in the World and
in the OIC Member Countries. In his presentation, Dr. CETIN provided an overview of the
importance of tourism as a socio-economic phenomena and the current state of the industry in
the World and in the OIC Region.
He underlined the importance of tourism particularly for developing economies and expressed
that tourism has experienced continued growth over the past eight years and become one of
the most rapidly developing industries in the world. He shared various figures demonstrating
that a strong tourism sector could contribute in many ways to development and the economy.
Various key tourism trends were also mentioned by Dr. Cetin such as demographic (ageing
population, growing middle class and millennials) and behavioral changes (quest for
authenticity and novelty, emerging destinations), advancements in technology (internet,
distribution channels, sharing economy), crises and risk management (types and impacts of
crises) and sustainability implications for tourism (best practices).
He then shared some figures about the current state of tourism industry in the World through
displaying World arrivals and receipts between 2000 and 2017. Dr. Cetin stated that global
tourism arrivals had grown from 678 million in 2000 to 1.3 billion in 2017. Dr. Cetin also
provided tourism market shares of different regions related to tourism arrivals and receipts
and stated Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific regions are growing at a larger pace than the
destinations in Europe and Americas.
He also compared contribution of tourism sector to the OIC member countries with those of
the World averages. The OIC Member Countries have recorded 150 billion USD receipts from
187 million arrivals in 2017. Dr. Cetin also pointed out the low per tourist spending in the OIC
Region. He stated that currently OIC is earning 750 USD per arrival whereas the World average
is around 1000 USD. Hence he suggested that the OIC Member Countries need to focus on
improving per tourist spending besides the volume in arrivals in order to increase the total
value created from tourism. Top 10 destinations among the OIC member states concerning
arrivals and receipts were also displayed during his presentation.
Dr. Cetin then mentioned about the current state of tourism in some member countries such as
Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco, UAE, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Finally, Dr.
Cetin shared various strengths of the OIC member countries (natural, cultural and human
resources, authentic experiences, competitive prices, and dynamic economies) as well as
various challenges the member countries face concerning destination planning (infrastructure,