For decades, tourism authorities fixated on a single metric: rising visitor arrivals. The duration of stays and visitor spending were secondary; the sole objective was relentless growth in headcount.
As short-term rentals displace residents and extreme heatwaves trigger wildfires and widespread disruption, the travel industry is facing intensifying pressure to embrace sustainability.
This entails tourism that minimizes environmental harm while delivering tangible benefits to local communities—and a new framework now exists to measure it.
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has introduced three new indices—Power, Efficiency, and Opportunity—designed to evaluate countries based on tourism’s environmental footprint, its contribution to employment, and its overall economic scale.
“Travel and tourism remains one of the world’s most influential sectors, and these new indices provide a broader, more holistic understanding of its impact,” said Gloria Guevara, President and CEO of the WTTC.
“As the sector expands, growth must be measured by quality as much as quantity,” Guevara added. “By evaluating economic contribution, environmental efficiency, and employment opportunities together, these indices offer critical insights to support sustainable development and informed decision-making, while underscoring the sector’s capacity to create opportunities for women and young people globally.”
How the Power, Efficiency, and Opportunity Indices Work
The Power Index is straightforward, measuring tourism’s overall scale, employment footprint, and investment levels.
According to the index, the top ten economies are the United States, China, India, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and Saudi Arabia.
The Environmental Efficiency Index, by contrast, assesses greenhouse gas emissions, low-carbon energy usage, water consumption, air pollution, and material use relative to the economic activity generated by tourism.
Among high-income economies, Sweden ranked highest, while Costa Rica led the upper-middle-income category.
The Opportunity Index evaluates the sector’s contribution to social development, examining employment growth, youth employment, and female employment.
Croatia ranks first among high-income economies, the Maldives leads the upper-middle-income group, El Salvador tops the lower-middle-income category, and The Gambia leads low-income countries.
The WTTC notes that in destinations such as the Maldives, Grenada, and Belize, tourism accounts for a substantial share of national employment.
Developed jointly by the WTTC and Oxford Economics, the indices encompass 184 countries.
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