Abstract:

The purpose of all societies is to lead a more prosperous life through providing economic growth. Tourism sector, one of the fastest growing sectors in the last 60 years, keeping growing almost every year and having an important share in macroeconomic data, plays an important role in making growth sustainable in developed countries while it is regarde as the driving force of economic growth in developing countries. This study intends to empirically reveal the effect of tourism on economic growth and development in Turkey. The study started with the studies in 1980, known as the period of Turkey's overseas expansion, and ended with those in 2021. In the study, two different models were established and real GDP as an indicator of growth, real GDP per capita as an indicator of development, number of tourists and tourism revenues as an indicator of tourism were discussed. Bootstrap Toda-Yamamoto Causality Analysis was used to determine the direction of the relationship between the variables. While the empirical results show that there is no causal relationship between the number of tourists and growth, it is demonstrated that there is unidirectional causality from number of tourists to both GDP and GDP per capita. The findings reveal that while the number of tourists contributes to growth, tourism revenues cannot provide sufficient contribution to the economy due to the fact that the tourism expenditure per capita remains constant. In this context, Turkey should focus on policies aimed at increasing tourism revenues rather than just the number of tourists.

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