The work it provides through hotels, restaurants, car rentals, taxi operators and tour guides is obvious enough.
Tourism can be like a rising tide for developing countries.
It has the potential to float every boat. A growing tourism industry serves to drive local demand and expand the local market in every single sector. It has led governments and economists of the South to adopt it as a focal sector for diversifying their economies, which have historically depended on producing primary raw materials, often just a single crop. It generates high-paying jobs across the spectrum. But it would be a terrible mistake for us in the South to regard tourism as an alternative to competitive agriculture or to the value-added production of other goods and services.