COMCEC Tourism Outlook-2018
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In 2017, Travel & Tourism directly supported 2.8% of total employment in 48 member states
(See Appendix). Tourism continues to be an important economic sector capable of the creation
of employment opportunities and poverty alleviation.
According to WTTC, 16% of total employment depends on travel and tourism in Maldives for
the year 2017. Direct contribution of travel and tourism was 7.7% in Albania, 7.3% in Jordan
and 7.1% in Morocco in 2017. Since tourism affects transportation, hotels and lodging, food &
beverage, cultural and entertainment, banking & finance and promotion and publicity services
and so on tourism’s contribution to employment tends to be slightly higher in these countries.
However, in some countries like Uzbekistan, Chad and Gabon, travel and tourism contribution
is less than other sectors.
Figure 4.3 displays international tourism activity in the member countries in terms of both
tourist arrivals and tourism receipts in recent years. Because of lack of data on the number of
tourist arrivals and tourism receipts of some countries estimations are made. During the 2010-
2014 period, shown in Figure 4.2, there was a trend of increasing tourist arrivals, however, in
2015 the number of tourist arrivals decreased from 178 million to 173 million in OIC Member
States and reached 2014 numbers back in 2016. The share in the total international tourist
arrivals worldwide decreased from 14.6 percent in 2015 to 14.4 percent in 2016. 2017 data for
the majority of OIC member are not yet available.
Figure 0.3 Tourist Arrivals and Tourism Receipts in the OIC Member Countries
Source: adopted from UNWTO, 2017
The number of tourism receipts of the member countries increased from $131 billion in 2015 to
$138 billion in 2016, corresponding to a 10 percent share in world’s total tourism receipts. In
2016, unusually strong exchange rate fluctuations significantly influenced receipts for member
152
157
163
159
178
173
178
114
117
124
127
140
131
138
100
110
120
130
140
150
130
140
150
160
170
180
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
OIC Tourist Arrivals (millions) OIC Tourism Receipts (Billion $)