TABLE OF CONTENTS The purpose of this first chapter is to focus on a number of economic characteristics of the tourism sector. They are the fundamentals of many aspects of the economics of tourism to which we shall refer in further chapters of this book. However, before starting with an overview of the economic characteristics, let us define what we understand by 'tourism' and what do we not consider to be tourism.
What is tourism? This is not such a simple question as it seems. Colloquially, free time, leisure, recreation, travel and tourism are used synonymously and are almost interchangeable. This is not quite correct. From a scientific and practical point of view, the reality is quite different. The case of Austria is a simple illustration. In 1999, based on the Tourism Satellite Account, tourism represented, in terms of value added (direct and indirect effect), 8.7 per cent of GDP. However, tourism and recreation together make up a total of 15.5 per cent of GDP (Franz et al., 2001).The difference is clear.
In the tourism literature, a distinction is made between conceptual and statistical (technical or operational) definitions of tourism.
One of the oldest conceptual definitions of tourism was given by two pioneers of tourism research, Hunziker and Krapf (1942), who defined tourism as 'being a sum of relations and phenomena resulting from travel and stay of non residents, in so far a stay does not lead to permanent residence and is not connected with any permanent or...
