In Praise Of Tourism

By Michael Elliott

Tourism is the Rodney Dangerfield of the global economy, the business that never gets respect. It drives economic development in ways that make it more important than the ballyhooed industries of the information revolution. Yet you could go to a score of conferences on international commerce without ever hearing tourism discussed.

One reason, I think, is guilt. About 11 million Americans will travel abroad this summer--80% of them as tourists. And such hordes can quickly ruin the very places they love. That's why environmental groups were so quick to criticize plans recently announced by the Mexican government to develop Baja California's unspoiled eastern coast. Those who remember a charming locale before the tourists arrived understandably sigh for the past. I have just returned from a week visiting friends in Crete, where a mountain gorge that I first hiked in solitary silence in 1973 now sees 260,000 visitors a year.

Still, tourism is one of the best motors of economic development for poor countries. The industry is astonishingly labor intensive. Every hotel needs cleaning staff and someone to mind the beach umbrellas. And those jobs don't require much education. Moreover, tourism offers a cheap crash course in entrepreneurship. The farmer with a few spare rooms can rent them out without committing vast sums of capital. The cafe owner can alter his menu to attract new customers, which is why you can now get a Full English Breakfast anywhere in the world (though this may not be a good thing). The local mechanic can rent out a few scooters and, if that goes well, seek a franchise from Avis. These undertakings develop the habits of risk taking without which no economy can grow to its potential.

Tourism offers a better life not just for those who make money from it but also for those who pay to enjoy it. A few steps from my friends' garden in Crete are cheap hotels that cater to Russians and eastern Europeans who, just the day before yesterday, could only dream of the Aegean sun. Rich Americans, too, have their lives enriched by travel--and not just while they are abroad. Tourism is like trade: it improves an economy's competitiveness. Trade does so because it stimulates local suppliers to match the quality and variety of imported goods. Tourism does so because returning travelers demand the goods and services they have seen in foreign countries. Near my office in New York City, a branch of Pier 1 Imports looks like a cross between a yard sale and the great house of a rubber plantation in Southeast Asia. You can buy everything from Filipino and Indonesian cabinets to a Kyoto dining room and a Jamaican bedroom. (Jamaica as a source of fashionable bedroom furniture--who knew?)

Of course, not every foreign service will be quickly adopted at home. Americans who attended the 1998 World Cup in France came back agog with tales of clean, reliable, high-speed trains that whisked them between cities. Will Amtrak soon offer such a system? Don't hold your breath. But the impact of foreign travel on American products shouldn't be underestimated. In the past few years, countless tourists to Europe and Japan have been impressed by local cell phones that don't lose connections when you turn a corner and that have all sorts of services that are denied Americans. So when, on your next cell phone, you discover that you can play Pokemon games with your office colleagues, you will know whom to thank: the tourism industry, which, in truth, deserves unstinting gratitude from all of us.

TIME.com ON AOL Visit time.com/global for more on tourism and economic development. You can e-mail Michael at melliot@aol.com