For many years, tourism boards chased one thing, and one thing only: Increased arrival numbers. It didn’t matter how long visitors stayed, or how much they spent, only that the number kept going up and up.
In a world seeing locals pushed out of their own cities by short-term rentals and historic heatwaves causing wildfires and other disruption, there’s been increased focus on sustainable travel.
That means the kind of tourism that both minimises the impact on the environment and benefits local communities – and now there’s a new way to measure this.
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has just launched its new power, efficiency and opportunity indices which evaluates countries based on the environmental impact of tourism, the sector’s contribution to employment, and its economic scale.
“Travel and tourism is one of the world’s most powerful sectors, and these new indices give us a broader and more holistic way to understand its impact,” WTTC president and CEO Gloria Guevara said.
“As the sector grows, we must focus on quality as well as quantity of growth. By assessing economic contribution, environmental efficiency and employment opportunities together, the indices provide valuable insights to support sustainable growth and informed decision-making, while highlighting the sector’s ability to create opportunities for women and young people around the world.”
How do the power, efficiency and opportunity indices work?
The power index is relatively simple, looking at the scale of tourism, employment footprint and levels of tourism investment.
Based on this, the top 10 is made up of the US, China, India, Germany, France, the UK, Japan, Mexico, Spain and Saudi Arabia.
The environmental efficiency index, meanwhile, looks at things like greenhouse gas emissions, low-carbon energy use, water consumption, air pollution and materials use relative to the economic activity tourism generates.
Looking at high-income economies, Sweden ranked the highest on the index, while for upper-middle-income economics, Costa Rica claims the top spot.
Finally, the opportunity index evaluates the sector’s contribution to social development, examining employment growth, youth employment and female employment.
Based on this, Croatia is ranked top for high-income economies; the Maldives for the upper-middle-income group; El Salvador the lower middle income and The Gambia for low-income countries.
Writing about the opportunity index, WTTC notes that in places like the Maldives, Grenada and Belize, tourism supports a significant share of national employment.
Developed by WTTC and Oxford Economics, 184 countries are included in the indices.