Curing the ‘Beach Disease’: Corruption and the Potential of Tourismled Transformation for Developing Countries and Transitional Economies

Abstract

The continuous global growth of the tourism sector over the last decades has highlighted itspotential as a developmental strategy for developing countries and transitional economies. Theattractiveness of a tourism-led economic transformation lies in the capability of attracting foreigninvestment and generating significant income even when subjected to unfavorable infrastructural-,business-, economic- and social-conditions. Empirically, nonetheless, tourism competitiveness,potential and transformational success greatly varies between country-cases. This paper exploresand discusses a number of potential factors (Regulatory framework- and Safety/Security-related)suggested in tourism literature as responsible for such outcome variations. Following thequantitative/statistical analysis of multi-source combined secondary data, there is inadequatequantitative support for the factors suggested. To account for the resulting theoretical (orexplanatory) gap, the role of corruption is proposed as a latent and under-researched factor for abetter understanding, exploration and implementation of tourism-led economic growth.

Keywords

• Tourism
• Economy
• Development
• Transformation
• Corruption