Resources

  • Mastercard: Journey to tomorrow: developing a destination strategy for 2025 and beyond

    After a broad-based recovery in the global travel and tourism sectors in 2022 and an acceleration of activity in 2023, 2024 will witness a return to — or, in some markets and segments, will surpass — pre-pandemic levels in terms of visitor arrivals, spending and global economic contribution.. The Mastercard Economics Institute’s 2024 Travel Trends Report analysed data from the first quarter of 2024 to reveal that consumer spending on travel remains robust while passenger traffic is on the rise.2 UN Tourism data for the same period showed international tourist arrivals reached 97% of pre-pandemic levels, with more than 285 million travellers on the move.3 And not only are they traveling again, but they are prioritizing leisure for longer — Mastercard’s analysis revealed that the average traveller extended their trip by one extra day compared to the same period in 2019.

  • Enhancing Resilience To drive sustainability in destinations

    This report aims to provide practical, structured inspiration to destinations as they think about resilience and sustainability

  • New Tourist - Paige McClanahan

    A brilliantly evocative, surprising, and page-turning exploration of how tourism has shaped the world, for better and for worse—essential reading for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the implications of their wanderlust. Through deep and perceptive dispatches from tourist spots around the globe—from Hawaii to Saudi Arabia, Amsterdam to Angkor Wat—The New Tourist lifts the veil on an industry that accounts for one in ten jobs worldwide and generates nearly ten percent of global GDP. Filled with revelations about an industry that shapes how we view the world, the book spotlights painful truths but also delivers a message of hope: that the right kind of tourism—and the right kind of tourist—can be a powerful force for good.

  • The Travel Foundation: Creating Equitable Destinations

    This report explores that question to help DMOs create a more balanced and equitable tourism model.

  • The Intrepid List: 100 Uncommon Experiences to Change the Way You Travel

    The Intrepid List is the very first travel guidebook from world-renowned experts in adventure, Intrepid Travel. But this isn't a bucket list book – this is for the explorers, the thrillseekers, the festivalgoers and foodies who want to get under the skin of a place; to discover local secrets and experience the eccentric, the rare and the astonishing.
    This book is filled with over 100 unique travel experiences that will inspire you to discover new destinations or find a new perspective on the classics. You know that it's not just about the place, but who you meet and how you get there, and this guide guarantees you'll have that all wrapped into one exciting package.

Recommended Reading

  • Revised and updated in its fifth edition, this internationally renowned and respected book provides the essentials to understanding all areas of airline finance. Designed to address each of the distinct areas of financial management in an air transport industry context, it also shows how these fit together, while each chapter and topic – for example, aircraft leasing – provides a detailed resource that can also be consulted separately.

    Supported at each stage by practical airline examples and recent data, Airline Finance examines the financial trends and longer term prospects for the airline industry as a whole, contrasting the developments for the major regions and airlines together with critical discussion of key issues that affect the industry as a whole. Important techniques in financial analysis are applied to the airlines as well as their investors such as banks and other financial institutions.

    Thoroughly amended and updated throughout, and expanded with the addition of two new chapters, the fifth edition reflects the many developments that have affected the industry, such as the impacts of the banking and sovereign debt crises on the airline industry, signs of re-nationalisation of airlines that have emerged in Europe, and the substantial changes that have occurred in connection with rating agencies and LIBOR. New start-ups and bankruptcies are covered for the first time in a new chapter, joined by airline mergers and acquisitions (M&A), both playing a role in airline concentration. Reflecting their status as a permanent feature, fuel hedging and fuel surcharges now also have their own chapter. The medium- to long-term future in terms of further concentration and government intervention (or the lack of it) and a shift in aircraft financing towards capital markets are discussed in the final chapter.

    The book is written for employees of airlines, airports and their suppliers, and investment bank and other analysts. It is also popular for use by universities and in-house courses on air transport management, within both academia and industry.

  • Global Airlines: Competition in a Transnational Industry presents an overview of the changing scene in air transport covering current issues such as security, no frills airlines, ‘open skies’ agreements, the outcome of the recent downturn in economic activity and the emergence of transnational airlines, and takes a forward looking view of these challenges for the industry.

    Since the publication of the second edition in 1999 major changes have occurred in the industry. The ‘rules of the game’ in air transport are now beginning to change; and it is time to take the story forward. This third edition contains nine new chapters and tackles the following issues amongst others:

    * Security: The tragic events of 11 September 2001, followed by the war in Iraq, and the resultant heightened tensions over security and passenger safety.
    * Financial instability: the cyclical downturn in economic activity has led some airlines to the verge of bankruptcy. Even some large well-established carriers are not immune from this. How can the industry look to survive?
    * Attaining global reach: implications of transborder mergers, open skies agreements and the transatlantic Common Aviation area. Can full globalisation ever be reached?
    * Low-cost carriers and e-commerce: as both increase, how much the industry re-structure and deal with issues associated with increased passenger traffic and decreased labour requirements?
    * Airport capacity: Air traffic is estimated to grow at a long-term average annual rate of 5 per cent per annum. But many airports in many parts of the world are already reaching their capacity limits. How can this be overcome and are the environmental implications?

    Using up to date data and case studies from major international airlines such as United Airlines, British Airways, and Qantas amongst many others, Global Airlines provides a comprehensive insight into today’s global airline industry.

  • Hotel Operations Management provides an up-to-date and comprehensive examination of all aspects of hotel administration from the viewpoint of the hotel general manager. Detailed information addresses the operating departments of a full-service hotel: Human Resources; Controller; The Front Office; Housekeeping; Food and Beverage; Safety and Property Security; Sales and Marketing; Accounting; and Facility Engineering and Maintenance. In-depth discussions highlight the importance of human resources in the labor-intensive hotel industry, franchising and contract management of properties in an ever-decreasing “Mom and Pop” segment, and hotel management in a global environment. Updated throughout to ensure that readers have the latest information, the Third Edition also includes new case studies, an entirely new chapter on guest services, and new end-of-chapter questions. This accurate book will give prospective hotel managers insight into all of the procedures effective managers use to ensure their hotel’s―and their own―success.

  • In this "meticulously reported and often disturbing exposé of the travel industry." (The New York Times Book Review), Elizabeth Becker describes the dimensions of this industry and its huge effect on the world economy, the environment, and our culture.

    Employing one out of twelve people in the world, the travel and tourism industry exploded at the end of the Cold War. In 2012 the number of tourists traveling the world reached one billion. Now everything can be packaged as a tour: with the high cost of medical care in the U.S., Americans are booking a vacation and an operation in countries like Turkey for a fraction of the cost at home.

    Elizabeth Becker travels the world to take the measure of the business: France invented the travel business and is still its leader; Venice is expiring of over-tourism. In Cambodia, tourists crawl over the temples of Angkor, jeopardizing precious cultural sites. Costa Rica rejected raising cattle for American fast-food restaurants to protect their wilderness for the more lucrative field of eco-tourism.

    Dubai has transformed a patch of desert in the Arabian Gulf into a mammoth shopping mall. Africa's safaris are thriving, even as its wildlife is threatened by foreign poachers. Large cruise ships are spoiling the oceans and ruining city ports as their American-based companies reap handsome profits through tax loopholes. China, the giant, is at last inviting tourists and sending its own out in droves. The United States, which invented some of the best of tourism, has lost its edge due to political battles. Becker reveals travel as product. Seeing the tourism industry from the inside out, through her eyes and ears, we experience a dizzying range of travel options though very few quiet getaways. Her investigation is a first examination of one of the largest and potentially most destructive enterprises in the world.

  • The book aims at providing an overview of the main economic issues related to tourism activities. While tourism is an important sector, contributing to more than 10% of the European Union’s GDP, research and teaching at the university level has only recently grown to a considerable level, and the field still lacks a firm research methodology. This book approaches tourism economics as an applied field of study in which tourism markets are represented as imperfect markets, with asymmetric and incomplete information among agents, bounded rationality, and with a strong presence of externalities and public goods. The economic issues studied in the book are approached both intuitively, largely using examples and case studies, and formally, with mathematical formalizations in text boxes.

  • Revised and updated, the fourth edition of The Economics of Tourism Destinations provides a guide to the economic aspects of tourism for students and practitioners to decipher the methods of measurement of supply, demand, trends and impacts as well as the role of tourism in development strategy for destinations and regional development.

    Each chapter combines theory and practice, and international case studies are provided. New to this edition:

    • Three brand new chapters on overtourism, terrorism and pandemics, and sustainable development, covering the importance of risk management and sustainable strategy in relation to tourism management.

    • New content on climate change, Airbnb, the impact of events and sustainable tourism development.

    • Pedagogical features: new case studies, discussion questions and student activities to show theory in practice and encourage reflection on the content.

    • Updated data throughout and reference to important new literature.

    Combining macro and micro aspects of economics to the tourism destination, this book is an invaluable resource for students studying this topic.

  • In this book Harold L. Vogel comprehensively examines the business economics and investment aspects of major components of the travel industry, including airlines, hotels, casinos, amusement and theme parks and tourism. The book is designed as an economics-grounded text that uniquely integrates a review of each sector's history, economics, accounting, and financial analysis perspectives and relationships. As such, it provides a concise, up-to-date reference guide for financial analysts, economists, industry executives, legislators and regulators, and journalists interested in the economics, financing and marketing of travel and tourism related goods and services. The third edition of this well-established text updates, refreshes, and significantly broadens the coverage of tourism economics. It further includes new sections on power laws and price-indexing effects and also introduces new charts comparing airline and hotel revenue changes and lodging revenue changes in relation to GDP.