Sustainable Tourism Law

A legal approach to sustainable development indicators (SDIS) in tourism Eduardo Moraes Sarmento Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão (CEsA) I. INTRODUCTION – A GLANCE AT TOURISM EVOLUTION Tourism has become a huge activity in many countries. International tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) have increased from 25 million in 1950 to 278 million in 1980, 674 million in 2000, and grew 7% in 2017 reaching a total of 1,322 million, which is the best result in the last seven years (UNWTO, 2018a). UNWTO expects that this current strong momentum will continue in 2018 at a rate of 4%-5% (UNWTO, 2018). According to UNWTO’s long-term forecast report Tourism Towards 2030 (UNWTO, 2018) international tourist arrivals worldwide will increase by 3.3% a year between 2010 and 2030 to reach a total of 1.8 billion by 2030. Likewise, international tourism receipts earned by several destinations worldwide have surged from US$ 2 billion in 1950 to US$ 104 billion in 1980, US$ 495 billion in 2000, and US$ 1,220 billion in 2016 meaning that tourism ranks as the world´s third largest export category (UNWTO, 2018a). Over the past six decades, tourism has experienced continued expansion and diversification to become one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. Tourism is therefore a major economic sector worldwide, directly contributing, on average, 4.2% of GDP, 6.9% of employment and 21.7% of services exports in the OECD area (OECD, 2018). On a global basis, tourism accounts for 7% of the world’s exports in goods and services in 2017 (US$ 1,4 trillion) and 10% of the world´s GDP (UNWTO, 2018a). Recent trends point to continued growth and outreach: globally, international tourist arrivals grew to over 1.2 billion in 2016, and OECD countries play a prominent role, with arrivals up 3.9%, representing 55% of the global total and accounting for 60.4% of global travel receipts (up 2.6% in real terms, reaching USD 1 226 billion in 2016). Despite widespread downward pressure on public