The tourism/leisure ratio, anticipating the limits to growth Available to Purchase

Tourism benefits from increasing leisure — a reliable mechanism? Several scholars in tourism have been inspired by the end of the decade to engage in forecasting projects. Especially, the Delphimethod has become popular among tourism experts in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. One of the results almost unanimously accepted is confidence in future growth of leisure time and paid holidays, in a rising number of families travelling twice or three times a year and in an overall increase of all tourism/travel categories. Though there is widespread understanding that the growth rate will be diminishing, optimism prevails with respect to the tourism/leisure ratio (i.e. “the proportion of leisure time spent in tourism”. The “lemming” paradigm is still dominating the minds of policy makers and managers: “We do not know why they move, but we know that, at certain times of the year, they all start moving — and we have a fair idea of the destinations.”