Tourism is close to a tenth of the world’s output and employment, and in almost every government each lever sits with a different department. A country that runs its visitor economy as one system keeps more of what it already earns. On an illustrative US$20bn economy, five points of retention is US$1bn a year, from the same visitors, every year.
A route-support agreement, a hosting bid, a hotel approval, a short-term rental regime and a workforce programme are normally approved on arrival totals, comparator cases and the case each owning department makes. Each arrives with its own study, on its own method. Put them on one method and the official who inherits them can see what each does to the others, and where the next point of growth is.
A visitor economy behaves as one economy whichever door the visitor came through. A passenger on a supported route sleeps in a hotel the planning authority approved, attends an event the culture ministry funded, eats in a restaurant the licensing regime permits, and is driven by a company the workforce programme trained. The same spend runs through the same 50 sectors regardless of whose decision started it. That is what connects the levers. A new route lifts hotel demand and a hotel approval expands the events a city can host. An event calendar sets the workforce a region needs, and a rental rule changes the yield on all of it.
You already hold the levers. Put them on one method to see them together.
Routes and access come first, because that is where the money enters; priced against the hotel nights, event attendance, and sector spend they carry, they are investments with a return. Events and the calendar, seen as one portfolio on one method, can be ranked on return net of displacement. Shoulder weeks with open capacity usually pay more than peak weeks. Approve hotel and short-term rental capacity against forecast demand by location and year, and sequence it so each opening is absorbed, and it fills and holds rate. Workforce and supply chain, sized to demand by origin, timing, and purpose, grow into the calendar. Policy and licensing, tested before signing, show their displacement, yield, and fiscal effect, so every rule lifts the system.
Absorptive capacity is how much demand a place’s supply chain can take on before the value leaks to imports, the next city, or an operator who flew in for the week. Sequencing is the discipline of pacing demand so that capacity grows into it. Approve keys in the order demand will fill them, release licences as hotels open, and place events in the weeks where the calendar has room. Done well, the local supply chain is larger at the end of the cycle than at the start, and it keeps more of every subsequent event.
The figures here are illustrative; they show the shape of the arithmetic so a reader can substitute their own economy. Take a visitor economy of US$20bn a year in gross visitor spend, retaining 60%. The country keeps US$12bn. Sequence the levers so retention rises five points, to 65%, and the country keeps US$13bn. The difference is US$1bn a year, and ten points is US$2bn. Five points come from five decisions. Two come from sequencing capacity so new keys fill with demand rather than discounting. One comes from placing events in shoulder weeks, one from growing the two or three local sectors that import the most, and one from a licensing regime that keeps hotels and short-term rentals complementary.
The gain is not a forecast of growth in gross spend, which depends on markets a government does not control. It is the share of existing spend the country keeps, which depends on decisions it does control. The share kept compounds, because it rests on decisions the government controls. The full paper is in the white papers, and the argument runs through every page written for national governments. For further reading, see OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2024.
Put your own figures into the arithmetic. Gross visitor spend, current retention, and the five decisions you could sequence differently this year. The number that comes out is the case for running the visitor economy as one system.
A hotel, a resort, or a mixed-use scheme fails underwriting when a single route, a single annual event, or a single source market turns out to be carrying more of the demand case than the committee realised. The dependency is the risk, and it can be measured before signature.
None of the three states what it includes, what period it covers, or whether the money stayed. A footprint figure is only useful when it carries its own definitions, and it is only defensible when it is kept separate from impact.
Oman has announced plans for a high-altitude destination at Jabal al Akhdar, combining sports training, wellness, and tourism at 2,400 metres. It is the kind of project a Gulf government can commit to at once, and the kind that lives or dies on a demand case nobody has yet published.
A major event is a rallying point for civic pride, and just as easily a rallying point for protest. The difference is usually whether residents can see what the event does for their street, in terms they recognise, before the road closures start.
The owners of the Bulls and the Blackhawks are putting a reported US$7bn into 55 acres around the United Center: housing, a music hall, a hotel, retail, a park. The arena already hosts more than 200 events a year. The question a developer should ask is what the other 165 nights are worth.
International arrivals to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025 while worldwide travel grew about 4%. Living Lab’s displacement model puts the forgone spending at roughly US$50bn, and about US$10.6bn of it within reach of five economies. Each is limited by a different constraint.
