Make a difference on holiday: seven places where tourism is the lifeblood, and where every dollar you spend helps your hosts
From Malta to the Maldives, these are economies whose health is largely determined by how much they earn from tourism, and where your choices about where to stay and eat can disproportionately benefit families
The following six countries – and one special administrative region – are among the most heavily dependent on our holiday money, according to a 2018 World Travel and Tourism Council report. These are destinations where every dollar spent is disproportionately beneficial, especially if we stay in locally owned hotels, eat at family-run restaurants and let the multiplier effect – a trickle-down dividend that circulates our cash through host communities – do the rest.
Basing an entire economy on tourism is not without risk but it’s a gamble many cash-strapped governments have no choice but to take. The travel industry now supports one in 10 jobs worldwide and provides developing nations with a financial lifeline. The problem is, there’s little to fall back on if things go wrong.
1 The Maldives
No other country relies on the revenue generated by tourism as much as the Maldives. The industry directly supported 34,500 jobs (in a population of 436,330) in 2017, and more than a third of the working population indirectly, thanks to the aforementioned multiplier effect. Despite an ongoing political crisis that led to a state of emergency being declared in February, the Indian Ocean archipelago actually saw visitor numbers increase in the first three months of 2018.
New resorts and the home-sharing revolution are said to be behind the timely spike in arrivals but perhaps people want to see the Maldives before they disappear beneath the rising seas. Studies suggest the necklace of 1,200 tropical islands is likely to become uninhabitable by the middle of the century because of frequent flooding, a lack of freshwater and damage to infrastructure.