The global benefits of GTI ...

Job creation, poverty reduction & sustainable development.

Travel and tourism is the world’s largest industry and an enormous creator of jobs across regional, national and international boundaries.

Despite the global recession travel and tourism continues to expand around the world and that expansion is expected to gather pace over the next decade with the development of previously vast, untapped travel, tourism and aviation markets, especially in Asia, Africa and the Americas. 

The WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council) predicts that growth for global travel and tourism could be driving up the global economy by as much as 4.3 per cent real GDP year by year over the next ten years.

This will ensure that global travel and tourism business will rise to almost ten per cent of the entire global economy in the next decade.

Also forecast is the creation of an additional 66 million jobs by 2020, 50 million of which will be in Asia.

With such gigantic growth forecasts, the potential benefits for the emerging travel markets, in terms of the expansion of wealth creation and improving living standards for many people, are clear to see. It’s also easy to understand why investment in travel and tourism has long been recognised as one of the main drivers of wealth creation worldwide and a crucial way of improving living standards, especially in developing economies.

Jobs generated by travel and tourism are not isolated into one or a small number of niche areas, those perhaps considered traditional travel industry sectors, or indeed limited to particular geographical locations, but spread right across the micro economies which they come into contact with and far beyond, having impact not just locally but globally - in retail, transportation, manufacturing, construction, telecommunications and IT, food and packaging, the list is endless.

Equally, travel business investment has long been recognised by the United Nations as making a positive contribution towards achieving sustainable development.
This is because travel and tourism has less impact on natural resources and the environment than many other industries and can also provide an economic incentive to conserve natural environments and habitats.

These patterns in terms of both economic benefits and sustainable development apply equally to both developed and emerging market economies.

At the centre of all this potential for positive economic growth is aviation and the connectivity on a global scale that it provides.

Airports bring connectivity for business and leisure travellers, and provide businesses with the means to move people and goods effectively and quickly. Combined with efficiency and global reach, aviation development should not be underestimated and especially as businesses seek to develop new opportunities that will allow them to prosper.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has recognised the importance of the development of new aviation hubs in terms of general economic growth as well as for the global travel and tourism industries.

In a nutshell, increased air-connectivity ensures business centres are more attractive to foreign investors, increasing potential for business efficiency, and creating a positive cycle of connectivity and economic development, as seen in the impact the expanding aviation hubs have had in Panama in Latin America and in the Middle East (Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha) and at other centres throughout the world.

The BCC states the benefits of aviation and airport development for economic expansion can be seen in the way that a rise in air connectivity can sustain a comprehensive improvement in productivity for a region and hence GDP.

In a competitive market structure the added productivity and efficiency that improved air connectivity can bring to a region can also lead to reduced costs for the consumer and improved working conditions for employees, including increasing levels of investment in employee training and infrastructure.