The Effect Of Tourism Sector On The Economic Growth Performance As A Perception Of Sustainable Development: Turkey Case

Tourism, a service sector, has shown a very rapid development throughout the world. Today, tourism sector accounts for the 30% of total world services trade on its own. Net contribution of tourism to the economies of countries cannot be calculated precisely in that tourism is a coalescence of sectors, that is, it embodies a number of large and small service sectors. Nevertheless, theoretical and empirical studies on this subject, in both national and international literature, have revealed that tourism has a positive effect on economic growth. Based on this consideration, it is seen that tourism in Turkey, which is a tourism country, developed rapidly especially after 1980 and tried to gain competitive advantage in international tourism sector, consistently with the Heckscher-Ohlin theory. In this context, the aim of this study is to test whether there is a long term relationship between tourism and economic growth, and to display the likely contribution of the sector to economic growth. Time series regarding the tourism receipts of 1963- 2004 and GNP have been analyzed through VAR model. The empirical findings obtained have shown that tourism has had a positive effect on economic growth, and the cointegration test has proved that there is a mutual relationship between the two variables in the long term. Global system dominating all of the world leads to any social or economic crisis experienced in a country to be felt more or less in all over the world. Under such difficult conditions, when regarding especially in terms of the developed and developing countries, the tourism sector, whose importance grows increasingly, has a character of being a lifesaver. When the natural beauty and cultural richness possessed are marketed with the correct and rational policies, they become an indispensable income resource (Aktas, 2005: 164). In this respect, tourism becomes dominant as one of the fastest developing sectors in the world. Especially, rapid improvement experienced in information and transportation, beyond the expected one, has accelerated the development of tourism having economic and social dimensions. Beginning from the second half of 20th century, tourism becoming important from economic point of view, constitutes a potential revenue resource for the economies of the developing countries (Opus, 2001: 37). Along with the development of tourism in a country, shortage of foreign money moderates; competition power of domestic firms with their competitors abr