Governments and Tourism

Governments and tourism, How governments with different levels of democracy influence tourism. Governments can have several reasons to interfere in the tourism industry. Economic benefits, conservation of culture, ideological reasons or ecological preservation can be motivations for governments to stimulate or discourage tourism in a country. The tourism industry is dependent on the government. Governments have the power to provide political stability, security, infrastructure and a financial and legal framework which are necessary for the tourism industry. How governments perceive tourism thus has its influence on tourism. Theory suggests that interaction between governments and tourism depends on how democratic a government is. This argument is used in the past by politicians, in the debate between autocratic and democratic governments. Whether this holds, is tested through quantitative research. The bivariate regression analysis shows that there is a relation between the level of democracy and tourism. The more democratic a country is, the more of its inhabitants will travel as tourists and the more tourists a country will attract. Inhabitants as well as visitors of more democratic countries spend more on tourism per capita then less democratic countries. When control variables as length of the coastline, temperature, purchasing power parity per capita and visa requirements are taken into account, the results of the bivariate regression analysis are overthrown. The key finding in this research is the result of the multiple regression analysis. The level of democracy does not have an influence on tourism flows, neither on the outbound tourism, nor on the inbound tourism. Instead, the PPP per capita shows to be a very important determinant for tourism flows. The higher the PPP per capita, the more outbound and inbound tourists a country has and the more these tourists will spend. Further research is needed to accurately determine the influence the PPP per capita has on tourism and the possible relation between the PPP per capita and the level of democracy in a country.