Empirical assessment of tourism-generated employment: Concepts and challenges

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the important concepts and challenges emerging from an assessment of the employment generated by tourism activity. Methodology: Standard methodology for the compilation of the tourism satellite account is used. The case study is Croatia, a small European country whose economy is immensely driven by tourism, thereby representing a particularly suitable research example. Results: The paper reports and discusses all practical issues related to the process of assessment and measurement of tourism-generated employment in a small tourism-driven economy. Conclusion: The assessment of tourism-generated employment is far from being analyzed and documented as thoroughly as the assessment of tourism-generated GDP. A common impression is that researchers have hitherto been too busy measuring tourism-generated GDP, thereby paying insufficient attention to the most important manifestation of GDP creation - employment. Therefore, this paper aims to fill, at least partially, this huge gap in the current literature.