Mapping post crises the European job growth in travel agencies and tour operator reservation services

Abstract

World Tourism Organisation, declares the Tour Operators as tourism engine of strategically importance to support jobs and inclusive growth in all regions. Tour operators emerges following the 2008 crises, as a global job engine. Its atypical profile of highest human capital concentrator in tourism, attract and retain talents, works digital with a high-intensity information use. Is a rapid adopter of technological innovation, generate high value added in highly competitive global markets. We look in this paper to understand why employment is growing or declining in a regional tourism tour operator sector during 2008-2018, in some EU28 regions? We use Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis to map the indicator 'tour operator's employment growth' components decomposed by the Shift Share Analysis Method. Analysed Eurostat data for 266 regions (281 regions) indicates that for the average regional tour operators employment growth heterogeneity is driven almost at half by region-specific factors. The main contributions are: identifying this indicator as appropriate to be a core one in OECD (2013) tourism competitiveness framework & redefine tour operator sector as a core sector of tourism in the Global model of tourism of Harrison.