Publication: Country Economic Memorandum for Sao Tome and Principe - Background Note 11: What is the Potential and Hindrances for the Tourism Sector in Sao Tome and Príncipe?
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Date
2019-06-26
ISSN
Published
2019-06-26
Author(s)
Monte-Rojas, Gabriel
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to
empirically evaluate the tourism performance of STP with
respect to the main determinants that have been found in the
literature. Tourism is clearly a comparative advantage of
STP and already an important economic activity, however, STP
is far from the characterization of a tourism-dependent
small economy. Tourism represents 10.8 percent of GDP and
the ratio between international inbound tourists and
population is at 14.5 percent. For a summary of how STP
relates to other destinations. This puts STP as the twelfth
country in terms of size of direct contribution of the
tourism sector to GDP and the eighteenth in terms of the
ratio between tourists and population. Using data from
different sources, this note analyzes STP’s tourism-related
characteristics and uses different empirical tools to
evaluate them vis-à-vis its peers. Economic literature shows
that tourism demand is affected by price and income but also
by a host of other factors such as air connectivity,
language, and culture among others. First, there is an
extensive research agenda on measuring price and income
elasticities of tourism, which is specific for different
types of tourism destination. Second, there is a myriad of
characteristics that are found to be important to the
tourism industry, such as remoteness, language, culture, air
connectivity, bilateral trade, etc. More recently, there has
been many studies emphasizing the role of digital media and
digital presence1 as a key determinant of tourist decisions.
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Citation
“Monte-Rojas, Gabriel. 2019. Country Economic Memorandum for Sao Tome and Principe - Background Note 11: What is the Potential and Hindrances for the Tourism Sector in Sao Tome and Príncipe?. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32140 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”