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The travel and tourism sector grew more in 2018 than all other economic sectors but one, adding a record $8.8 trillion to the world’s combined Gross Domestic Product – up from $8.3 trillion in 2017 - as well as 319 million new jobs. The travel and tourism sector’s growth performance, touted recently in numbers released by the World Travel & Tourism Council, highlights the size and growing importance of a sector that is not broadly understood by the public to be as big and as economically important as it actually is. Overall, travel and tourism generated 10.4 percent of the world’s total economic activity in 2018.
But of the 10 largest travel and tourism regions in the world, North America is growing slowest. The fastest-growing is the Caribbean region, which saw travel and tourism generate $62 billion, or 15.5 percent more economic activity than in 2017. Southeast Asia’s travel and tourism sector saw its economic activity rise 12.2 percent, to $373 billion. The rest:By itself the United States remains the largest travel and tourism market when considering individual nations rather than regions.