The economic impacts of tourism: A Special Issue

Within appropriately conducted economic impact analysis, tourism or event revenues are translated into economic impact measures by assigning them to one of several cate-gories and aggregating in different combinations (Tyrrell and Johnston 2001). Input-output (I-O) analysis then may be used to assess secondary, indirect, or induced impacts of the initial expenditures (Miller and Blair 1985). Although models required for many types of impact analysis can be mathe-matically complex (cf., Miller and Blair 1985), increasingly available software packages (e.g., IMPLAN in the United States) allow estimation of such models by individuals with less technical expertise. The resulting explosion of economic impact analyses has provided increasingly sought-after infor-mation to travel and tourism planners but has also caused some to question the appropriateness and validity of many travel and tourism applications and to point out the many crit-ical issues on which appropriate impact analysis depend