The Role Of Tourism In European Regional Growth

Nowadays the world tourism represents one of the industrial areas with the highest development potential and always in expansion. With its variety of attractions and quality of its tourism services, Europe is the world leading tourist destination: so tourism is an activity which can play an important role in the attainment of the Growth and Jobs Strategy goals. In fact in the European Union about 5% of the GDP and of total occupation rate comes from tourism and currently 8 millions of people result to be directly employed in this sector. However these esteems grow if considering all the economy linked to tourism: the European Union's travel and tourism economy is expected to account for 10,9% of GDP and 25,7 millions of workplaces (11,8% of total employment) in 2007. Greece attracts well over 16 million tourists a year contributing 15% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nation's Economy. The country has been an attraction for international visitors since antiquity for its rich and long history and more recently for its glorious Mediterranean coastline and beaches. In 2005, 6,088,287 tourists visited only the city of Athens, the capital city. In 2004, the country welcomed over 16.5 million tourists. At the same time, tourism consumption increased considerably since the turn of the millennium, from US$ 17.7 bn. in 2000 to US$ 29.6 bn. in 2004. The number of jobs directly or indirectly related to the tourism sector were 659,719 and represented 16.5% of the country's total employment for that year. This article focuses in the fields of tourism and regional growth in Europe. Moreover, it attempts to analyze the evaluation of tourism and industrial sectors in European Union. It combines both a theoretical and an empirical background. It also investigates and attempts to explain the role and socio-economic effects of tourism activities in the convergence and divergence process of European regions (in an attempt to interpret the so-called Dutch Disease phenomenon).