Economic Impact of Tourism Accommodation: Thailand

Accommodation plays a significant role in tourism infrastructure; without a reliable place to stay overnight, tourists will not visit the location. Aligning with concepts described in the 2008 Tourism Satellite Account- Recommended Methodological Framework (TSA- RMF 2008), accommodation services are among 12 tourism sectors which are interrelated with each other through flow-on activities. When accommodation establishments purchase goods and services through their day-to-day transaction and pay their workers, this money is recirculated through the economy. Therefore, this study examined the impacts of expenditure spent by the visitors for accommodation on the economy both directly and indirectly. The Leontief Input-Output Model for the twelve tourism sectors was developed to calculate the impacts of tourist spending on lodging and other interrelated tourism services in Thailand. Data used in this study are from both primary and secondary sources. Findings indicated that tourism accommodation in Thailand was the second largest contributor to the tourism industry after “Air passenger transport services†. The computed multiplier showed that linkages of services between accommodation services providers and other tourism sectors helped generate income for the economy higher than the direct income paid directly from the tourists.