Tourism specialisation and education: Leading the way to better labour conditions?

Abstract

This article studies the returns to education in the Argentinian tourism sector considering tourism specialisation. With data from the Permanent Household and Hotel Occupancy Surveys, we make use of Mincer equations to understand the relation between wages and education. For that, we take into account three different types of agglomerates: Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA), agglomerates more specialised in tourism (AT) and agglomerates less specialised in tourism (ALT). We find that, for tourism workers, there is a penalty in returns to education, which differs according to the type of agglomerate. These negative returns are partially mitigated by tourism specialisation. In CABA, the most developed and specialised destination, there is almost no penalty. In the case of AT, the mitigation is greater than in ALT. Consequently, this specialisation positions AT in the tourism development path leading to the improvement of labour conditions. There should therefore be an interaction between tourism and education, and it is also imperative to generate incentives and partnerships for the improvement of the sector’s training and labour conditions.