Tourism and Inclusive Growth: Evaluating a Diagnostic Framework

Abstract

This paper aims to further advance the theoretical and practical understanding of tourism and inclusive growth by evaluating the Tourism-Driven Inclusive Growth Diagnostic (T-DIGD) framework in practice. This was done by defining a mixed-method methodology including identifying 96 indicators and applying the framework to the tourism sector of North Macedonia. Testing the diagnostic and evaluating its strengths and weaknesses showed that this is a promising approach as it can identify the possible binding constraints to tourism-driven inclusive growth out of a large selection of possible factors. It can thereby contribute to a way of systematically and transparently prioritizing policies to formulate a context-specific development strategy in the presence of limited resources. This paper is timely and relevant for tourism policy makers as there is an increased demand for tools that can be used for evidence-based policy making for tourism development.