Abstract:
Measurement of tourism economic impacts is important in monitoring progress
towards meeting planned socio-economic goals. However, there has been
insufficient attention to rigorous analysis of the ramifications of tourism beyond
accounting for initial impacts. This study evaluates the economic impacts of
tourism in Rwanda by examining its effects on employment, labor incomes, and
output and value addition. Rwanda’s 2014 Input-Output tables were used to
compute direct, indirect, induced and total (SAM Type) multipliers which
interacted with internal tourism demand data from Rwanda’s 2014 tourism
satellite account to estimate impacts. Labor income, output and value-added
multipliers indicate that tourism has strong linkages with service sectors, while
the employment multiplier indicates robust linkages with agriculture. Results
indicate that internal tourism demand created 29% of all jobs, generated 9.7% of
labor incomes, 11.1% of total value addition and 12% of national output in 2014.
Therefore, increasing internal tourism demand in Rwanda will lead to higher
labor income, increased output and value addition and higher employment in
agriculture and other associated sectors. This study’s main contribution is taking
into account the predominantly informal sector of Rwanda’s economy, especially
with respect to the domestic tourism market. Future studies could estimate the
magnitude of leakages from the economy through consumption and production
processes.
