Tourism and Economic Resilience: Implications for Regional Policies

Tourism is an important key sector in regional and national economies which appears to have often a favorable recovery potential after a shock, leading to the notion of resilience capacity of regions. In the context of a tourism-led growth mechanism, the concept of tourism-led resilience capacity is introduced (constituted of sustained tourism resilience and speed of recovery). The analytical framework is tested for the 2008–2012 financial crisis in European Union by examining relevant data from European NUTS 2 regions. The research is unfolded on two complementary axes: (a) assessing the resilience of the tourism sector, and (b) estimating the weight of tourism in the overall resilience performance of EU regions. Finally, several implications for regional and European policies are addressed as well, particularly related to the role of innovation and diversification in increasing the recovery speed following a disruption.