**4. Tourism competitiveness and economic growth**

As previously stated, the importance of tourism activity as a source of development and growth has been highlighted by numerous institutions at global level [33,34]. Nevertheless, this visibility has not rested there, as a strong scientific interest has arisen in the academic sphere regarding the study of this subject. Thus, some economists, such as [35], and more recently [36], suggest that tourism activity can promote the growth and development of countries, especially because international tourism can bring in foreign currencies that are used for the financing of capital assets, which allow improvements to be made in the production of goods and services. In that sense, in 2013, the international income through tourism repre‐ sented 30% of global export services, and 6% of the total global exports of goods and services [37].

For other economists, however, tourism activity can generate growth simply because it is a *"large industry".* It is more — it can be considered the largest industry at global level [38]. As such, in agreement with [34], in 2013, the total contribution of tourism to the global economy reached 9.5% of global GDP (7 trillion U.S. \$), generating a total of almost 22 million jobs, which represents one in ten jobs on the planet, of which 9 million jobs, 4.1% of the total global employment, can be considered jobs directly related to tourism.

Therefore, the sector has a large capacity to generate employment and to increase the value of its production and tax revenue, as stated by different authors [39–45]. These tax revenues, can promote economic development policies, by seeking efficiency through greater competition between the local companies and others of different tourism destinations [46,47], thereby facilitating the use of economies of scale [48].

In many studies, the role of tourism activity is recognised as a driving force of economic development [14,15,49–52]. However, most of these studies do not analyse whether this growth is later translated into an improvement of the economic progress or the well-being of the population. They do agree, however, that the growth of the well-being is noticeably inferior to the growth of the GDP, admitting that the increase of tourism production contributes to development, at least up to a certain level of income, to which very few countries could have arrived without the tourism activity [53]. Therefore, these scientific shortcomings suppose a broad and important field for analysis and study.

In other more recent studies, tourism competitiveness is linked with growth in certain economic areas [2,4,54–57]. This has generated new research giving rise to an academic debate about the manner of measuring this competitiveness [9,58]. Beyond these measurements, a number of emerging studies emphasise the role of some factors, generally linked to economic growth, as determinants of a greater tourism competitiveness, and therefore of the improve‐ ment or growth of the tourism sector [59,60]

All this seems to highlight that tourism competitiveness, the growth of tourism activity, the economic growth and the production factors are variables that can be related.
