Topics & Positions
Economy
Tourism as a driver of growth and prosperity
One in ten of the global workforce is employed in the travel industry. Tourism accounts for almost ten per cent of the world's GDP. This makes tourism invaluable to the economy and society.
Both developed and developing countries benefit from the positive impact of tourism. As the world's largest integrated travel group, TUI plays an important role in strengthening the positive impact of tourism in Europe and in destinations around the world. Our call to policymakers: create a level playing field.
The year 2024 marks a milestone for international tourism: with 1.4 billion international travellers, the industry has finally recovered from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The World Tourism Organisation UN Tourism also forecasts continued growth for 2025.
Europe is also benefiting from this trend. Europe’s industry expects around 747 million international arrivals in 2024 – one per cent more than in 2019. The benefits to the EU’s labour market are considerable: tourism provides jobs for around 25 million people in total – that's around twelve per cent of the EU workforce.
In the southern European regions, tourism is an even bigger contributor to employment. Its share there is over 20 per cent in some cases. The TUI Group has made a significant contribution to this by investing millions in the region.
Employment trough Tourism
Share of total employment, direct, indirect and induced, estimate for 2024
Tourism also provides millions of jobs in emerging and developing countries. Take Mexico: almost 8 million people work directly or indirectly in the tourism industry, which is almost 13 per cent of all employees in the country. And in Cape Verde, 47 per cent of the working population is employed in tourism - around 105,000 workers. Tourism secures livelihoods, provides prospects for education and development and strengthens social and environmental standards. A comparison between tourism expenditure in newly industrialising and developing countries and official development aid shows just how important tourism is: the tourism receipt is almost three times as high.
TUI - a systematically important player
TUI is of great importance for tourism worldwide. In many places, the company is the largest private investor and a long-term strategic partner of many destination countries. This is particularly true for regions in southern Europe and in emerging and developing countries such as Cape Verde. TUI has always been and remains a central partner – also for medium-sized companies. For example, the travel group is the largest commission provider for German travel agencies and, with its online platform TUI Musement, arranges excursions for tens of thousands of excursion micro-enterprises worldwide. In holiday destinations, TUI thus also helps to stabilise the local tourism infrastructure and supports small and medium-sized tourism businesses on the ground.
The TUI Group is the only company in the world that offers the value chain in the travel sector end-to-end: from travel advice before a booking is even made to the journey by air, the holiday experience in the hotel or on the ship, to activities, service, transfers and support for guests at their holiday destination.
The TUI Care Foundation, an initiative set up by TUI Group, is aimed at making a difference in the destinations. It draws on tourism as a force for good to improve the lives of young people, preserve the natural environment and support local communities in their development. Since 2016, the foundation has initiated and promoted over 100 projects in 30 countries worldwide. Recently, the foundation announced the “Tourism for Development Fund” together with UN Tourism. The fund aims to promote sustainable tourism development in the least developed countries (LDCs), and the TUI Care Foundation will provide around 10 million euros for this purpose until 2030.
