Elements of macro‐planning in tourism development

From a tourism viewpoint, the division of the world into tourist‐generating and tourist‐receiving countries is not as sharp as one might imagine. Tourism is a give and take traffic, which presupposes an exchange of tourism arrivals between countries although to varying extents. Nevertheless, economic realities show that the industrial states with the highest standard of living (mostly Western) are the main tourist generators in the world. Statistics show that 75% of the world tourism traffic is generated by twelve Western countries only, which get at the same time about 84% of the international tourism movement. Developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America get about 7%, if we leave room for countries in‐between like Japan, Australia and those of Eastern Europe.