Tourism: The Tourism Industry

Tourism is one of the most exciting and progressive industries. Part of the visitor economy, tourism is also big business and it impacts on almost every other industry. Everyone gains from properly managed tourism. the tourism industry is the total of all businesses that directly provide goods or services to facilitate business, pleasure and leisure activities away from the home environment.

The UN’s internationally accepted definition describes tourism as the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business or other purposes. The definition covers virtually all activities and consumption directly connected with travel, including business

Total tourism turnover in Sweden rose by 3.2 percent to almost SEK 255 billion in 2010. Almost 50 percent of this figure was attributable to domestic leisure travellers, while 17 percent was attributable to domestic business travellers and just over 34 percent to foreign visitors. Tourism’s export value, measured as foreign visitors’ consumption in Sweden, increased by 1.7 percent to just over SEK 87 billion in 2010, which was over 50 percent more than the iron and steel exports and more than double the value of Swedish car exports.

Although the export value of the tourism industry makes a significant contribution to the Swedish economy, the industry’s ability to boost employment has also been a key development in recent years. Tourism is also able to create jobs for young people and has a need for the skills offered by people with foreign backgrounds. While employment in many traditional primary industries in Sweden has declined, tourism has created 31,300 new jobs since 2000. In 2010, there were over 162,000 jobs in the tourism

When data on number of tourists are not available, the number of visitors, which includes tourists, same-day visitors, cruise passengers, and crew members, is shown instead. Sources and collection methods for arrivals differ across countries. In some cases data are from border statistics (police, immigration, and the like) and supplemented by border surveys. In other cases data are from tourism accommodation establishments. For some countries number of arrivals is limited to arrivals by air and for others to arrivals staying in hotels. Some countries include arrivals of nationals residing abroad while others do not. Caution should thus be used in comparing arrivals across countries. The data on inbound tourists refer to the number of arrivals, not to the number of people traveling. Thus a person who makes several trips to a country during a given period is counted each time as a new