I'm always interested in what exactly counts as tourism-dependent, and how on earth you allocate that, particularly with so many tourism workers in the black economy. A lot of construction on Bali, eg, will be tourism-centric; I know (eg) a lawyer and a web designer whose income disappeared when Covid hit; and you can certainly see the knock-on effect of reduced incomes on the economy as a whole when you look at streets of local shops, warungs etc. But, yes, worth pointing out that there are farms, fishers, workshops and factories, sand miners, creative industries, universities, schools, hospitals, and a bunch of offshored services from tech to customer service to name just a few economic sectors that continue to exist.....
Hey Theo, yes that is all true. Some of the problem I guess is in how the data is collected. Take telecoms or banking for eg—done portion on those two cater to tourists, but in the case of either Bali or Phuket I think you’d be hard pressed to prove that either is solely tourism related. I guess a partial solution would be for some math brainiac to come up with formulas, I dunno that 20% of banking is tourism related, then can work with that. But dumping the entirety of either industry into tourism artificially overstated the value of tourism (inbound or domestic) to the local economy.
I'm always interested in what exactly counts as tourism-dependent, and how on earth you allocate that, particularly with so many tourism workers in the black economy. A lot of construction on Bali, eg, will be tourism-centric; I know (eg) a lawyer and a web designer whose income disappeared when Covid hit; and you can certainly see the knock-on effect of reduced incomes on the economy as a whole when you look at streets of local shops, warungs etc. But, yes, worth pointing out that there are farms, fishers, workshops and factories, sand miners, creative industries, universities, schools, hospitals, and a bunch of offshored services from tech to customer service to name just a few economic sectors that continue to exist.....
Hey Theo, yes that is all true. Some of the problem I guess is in how the data is collected. Take telecoms or banking for eg—done portion on those two cater to tourists, but in the case of either Bali or Phuket I think you’d be hard pressed to prove that either is solely tourism related. I guess a partial solution would be for some math brainiac to come up with formulas, I dunno that 20% of banking is tourism related, then can work with that. But dumping the entirety of either industry into tourism artificially overstated the value of tourism (inbound or domestic) to the local economy.