Economic development trends in the EU tourism industry. Towards the digitalization process and sustainability

Qual Quant. 2020 Oct 26:1-26. doi: 10.1007/s11135-020-01056-9. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

From an economic viewpoint, tourism is heralded as bringing income to local communities. From an ecological standpoint, tourism poses a threat to environments. Sustainable tourism should leave a minimum negative impact on the places visited and preferably have rather positive impact on society. The digitization of the tourism economy is conducive to increasing the efficiency of enterprises operations, but also have positive impact on consumers. The objectives of the study are: to seek an answer to the question whether there is a relationship between the development of the tourism industry and GDP growth. Based on it there are two specific questions: What is a relationship between the level of development of digitization (e-commerce) and the development of the tourism industry and what is a relationship between the development of the tourism industry and sustainability factors? The originality of our research results among others results from three groups of variables use in the analysis (ICT group, SDG group and E&T group). Our research explores the factors affecting the tourism industry and relations of the digitization of tourism economy, sustainability and economy growth.

Keywords: Digitalization; Economic and financial development; Sustainability; Tourism.