A New Index for Tourism: The Case of Maine and the Canadian Provinces

Abstract

A new measure of tourism spending expenditures, using sales tax data, might be more complete than other methods found in the literature. The authors assert that benefits of tourism spending can be measured only in terms of profits in the form of actual taxes the jurisdictions collect and by returns to tourism proprietors, net of expenses. In contrast, other studies that focus only on gross spending overestimate the benefits of tourism.