The Contribution of Public Investment in Tourism Sector to the Third World Tourism Destination Countries' Market Share in the Global Tourism Market

Globalization refers to a restructuring process of cross-border flows of capital, people, knowledge, information and other resources, which leads to an increasing integration of economies, societies and civilizations. Like many other sectors, travel and tourism are among the many causes and results of the global flows of resources in an overwhelming globalization process. To keep on track with the competition in the global tourism market, governments are configuring their macroeconomic policies to accelerate visitors' interest in traveling to their countries. This paper aims to verify if public investment significantly enhances tourism performances, which is measured as the market share of tourist arrivals and tourism receipts in the world tourism market of Third World countries. The econometric analysis of panel data of 1995 to 2009 was applied to this empirical research. The results support the fact that public investment has proven to be one of the effective strategies in stimulating tourism performance of Third World countries.