BRIEF March 31, 2022

Tourism and Competitiveness

Overview
Strategy
Results
Publications

The tourism sector provides opportunities for developing countries to create productive and inclusive jobs, grow innovative firms, finance the conservation of natural and cultural assets, and increase economic empowerment, especially for women, who comprise the majority of the tourism sector’s workforce. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism was the world’s largest service sector—providing one in ten jobs worldwide, almost seven percent of all international trade and 25 percent of the world’s service exports—a critical foreign exchange generator. In 2019 the sector was valued at more than US$9 trillion and accounted for 10.4 percent of global GDP.
Tourism offers opportunities for economic diversification and market-creation. When effectively managed, its deep local value chains can expand demand for existing and new products and services that directly and positively impact the poor and rural/isolated communities. The sector can also be a force for biodiversity conservation, heritage protection, and climate-friendly livelihoods, making up a key pillar of the blue/green economy. This potential is also associated with social and environmental risks, which need to be managed and mitigated to maximize the sector’s net-positive benefits.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for tourism service providers, with a loss of 20 percent of all tourism jobs (62 million), and US$1.3 trillion in export revenue, leading to a reduction of 50 percent of its contribution to GDP in 2020 alone. The collapse of demand has severely impacted the livelihoods of tourism-dependent communities, small businesses and women-run enterprises. It has also reduced government tax revenues and constrained the availability of resources for destination management and site conservation.
Naturalist local guide with group of tourist in Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve Ecuador. Photo: Ammit Jack/Shutterstock
Tourism and Competitiveness Strategic Pillars
Our solutions are integrated across the following areas:
Competitive and Productive Tourism Markets. We work with government and private sector stakeholders to foster competitive tourism markets that create productive jobs, improve visitor expenditure and impact, and are supportive of high-growth, innovative firms. To do so we offer guidance on firm and destination level recovery, policy and regulatory reforms, demand diversification, investment promotion and market access.
Blue, Green and Resilient Tourism Economies. We support economic diversification to sustain natural capital and tourism assets, prepare for external and climate-related shocks, and be sustainably managed through strong policy, coordination, and governance improvements. To do so we offer support to align the tourism enabling and policy environment towards sustainability, while improving tourism destination and site planning, development, and management. We work with governments to enhance the sector’s resilience and to foster the development of innovative sustainable financing instruments.
Inclusive Value Chains. We work with client governments and intermediaries to support Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), and strengthen value chains that provide equitable livelihoods for communities, women, youth, minorities, and local businesses.
The successful design and implementation of reforms in the tourism space requires the combined effort of diverse line ministries and agencies, and an understanding of the impact of digital technologies in the industry. Accordingly, our teams support cross-cutting issues of tourism governance and coordination, digital innovation and the use and application of data throughout the three focus areas of work.

Tourism and Competitiveness Theory of Change
Examples of our projects:
In Indonesia, a US$955m loan is supporting the Government’s Integrated Infrastructure Development for National Tourism Strategic Areas Project. This project is designed to improve the quality of, and access to, tourism-relevant basic infrastructure and services, strengthen local economy linkages to tourism, and attract private investment in selected tourism destinations. In its initial phases, the project has supported detailed market and demand analyses needed to justify significant public investment, mobilized integrated tourism destination masterplans for each new destination and established essential coordination mechanisms at the national level and at all seventeen of the Project’s participating districts and cities.
In Madagascar, a series of projects totaling US$450m in lending and IFC Technical Assistance have contributed to the sustainable growth of the tourism sector by enhancing access to enabling infrastructure and services in target regions. Activities under the project focused on providing support to SMEs, capacity building to institutions, and promoting investment and enabling environment reforms. They resulted in the creation of more than 10,000 jobs and the registration of more than 30,000 businesses. As a result of COVID-19, the project provided emergency support both to government institutions (i.e., Ministry of Tourism) and other organizations such as the National Tourism Promotion Board to plan, strategize and implement initiatives to address effects of the pandemic and support the sector’s gradual relaunch, as well as to directly support tourism companies and workers groups most affected by the crisis.
In Sierra Leone, an Economic Diversification Project has a strong focus on sustainable tourism development. The project is contributing significantly to the COVID-19 recovery, with its focus on the creation of six new tourism destinations, attracting new private investment, and building the capacity of government ministries to successfully manage and market their tourism assets. This project aims to contribute to the development of more circular economy tourism business models, and support the growth of women- run tourism businesses.
Through the Rebuilding Tourism Competitiveness: Tourism Response, Recovery and Resilience to the COVID-19 Crisis initiative and the Tourism for Development Learning Series, we held webinars, published insights and guidance notes as well as formed new partnerships with Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, United Nations Environment Program, United Nations World Tourism Organization, and World Travel and Tourism Council to exchange knowledge on managing tourism throughout the pandemic, planning for recovery and building back better. The initiative’s key Policy Note has been downloaded more than 20,000 times and has been used to inform recovery initiatives in over 30 countries across 6 regions.
The Global Aviation Dashboard is a platform that visualizes real-time changes in global flight movements, allowing users to generate 2D & 3D visualizations, charts, graphs, and tables; and ranking animations for: flight volume, seat volume, and available seat kilometers. Data is available for domestic, intra-regional, and inter-regional routes across all regions, countries, airports, and airlines on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis from January 2020 until today. The dashboard has been used to track the status and recovery of global travel and inform policy and operational actions.
Traditional Samburu women in Kenya. Photo: hecke61/Shutterstock.
Featured Data
We-Fi WeTour Women in Tourism Enterprise Surveys (2019)
Sierra Leone | Ghana
Featured Reports
Global
Blue Tourism in Islands and Small Tourism-Dependent Coastal States : Tools and Recovery Strategies (2022)
Resilient Tourism: Competitiveness in the Face of Disasters (2020)
Tourism and the Sharing Economy: Policy and Potential of Sustainable Peer-to-Peer Accommodation (2018)
Supporting Sustainable Livelihoods through Wildlife Tourism (2018)
The Voice of Travelers: Leveraging User-Generated Content for Tourism Development (2018)
Women and Tourism: Designing for Inclusion (2017)
Twenty Reasons Sustainable Tourism Counts for Development (2017)
An introduction to tourism concessioning:14 characteristics of successful programs. The World Bank, 2016)
Getting financed: 9 tips for community joint ventures in tourism. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and World Bank, (2015)
Global investment promotion best practices: Winning tourism investment” Investment Climate (2013)
Country-Specific
COVID-19 and Tourism in South Asia: Opportunities for Sustainable Regional Outcomes (2020)
Demand Analysis for Tourism in African Local Communities (2018)
Tourism in Africa: Harnessing Tourism for Growth and Improved Livelihoods. Africa Development Forum (2014)
COVID-19 Response
Global
Expecting the Unexpected : Tools and Policy Considerations to Support the Recovery and Resilience of the Tourism Sector (2022)
Rebuilding Tourism Competitiveness. Tourism response, recovery and resilience to the COVID-19 crisis (2020)
COVID-19 and Tourism in South Asia Opportunities for Sustainable Regional Outcomes (2020)
WBG support for tourism clients and destinations during the COVID-19 crisis (2020)
Tourism for Development: Tourism Diagnostic Toolkit (2019)
Tourism Theory of Change (2018)
Country -Specific
COVID Impact Mitigation Survey Results (South Africa) (2020)
COVID Preparedness for Reopening Survey Results (South Africa) (2020)
COVID Study (Fiji) (2020) with IFC

Featured Blogs
Fiona Stewart, Samantha Power & Shaun Mann, Harnessing the power of capital markets to conserve and restore global biodiversity through “Natural Asset Companies” | October 12^th 2021
Mari Elka Pangestu, Tourism in the post-COVID world: Three steps to build better forward | April 30^th 2021
Hartwig Schafer, Regional collaboration can help South Asian nations rebuild and strengthen tourism industry | July 23^rd 2020
Caroline Freund, We can’t travel, but we can take measures to preserve jobs in the tourism industry | March 20^th 2020

Featured Webinars
Circular Economy and Tourism. This webinar discusses how new and circular business models are needed to change the way tourism operates and enable businesses and destinations to be sustainable.
Sector Monitor - Global Aviation Dashboard. This webinar presents the Global Aviation Dashboard that summarizes and visualizes data on worldwide commercial flight movements over the past year.
Closing the Gap: Gender in Projects and Analytics. The purpose of this webinar is to raise awareness on integrating gender considerations into projects and provide guidelines for future project design in various sectoral areas.
WTO Tourism Resilience: Building forward Better. High-level panelists from Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Jordan and Kenya discuss how donors, governments and the private sector can work together most effectively to rebuild the tourism industry and improve its resilience for the future.