A Measuring Tourism Specialization: a Composite Indicator for the Spanish Regions

Abstract

Tourism sector is playing a key role in the development of a region, therefore tourism activities continue to growth in the last year despite the actual crisis (UNWTO 2011). Also, Spain maintains in the better positions of the world ranking. Furthermore, Tourism activities generate around 10% of GPD and represents 11.5% of total workers of the Spanish Economy in 2011. Nevertheless, this is not true for all the Spanish Regions. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the tourism specialization in the Spanish Provinces. In general previous literature supports the idea that tourism enhances economic growth (Neves & Maças 2008). Given that we are able to define Tourism specialization from very different perspectives, it is essential to review the previous literature and clarify which indicators are the best ones to measure tourism specialization. In order to measure tourism specialization from a wide point of view, we account for both demand and supply side variables for tourism sector, and amenities. We developed principal component analysis (PCA) in order to summarize the information provided by the different measures. It is essential to understand the relationship between tourism characteristics, amenities and its economic impacts for public policies and tourism managing.

Keywords

• Tourism
• Labour Market
• Tourism Specialization
• Temporary Jobs
• Regional Development