The leakages of Turkey's tourism revenues: A calculation approach

There has been a continued interest in studies toward determining income effects of tourism, for countries generating income from tourism in the World. However, the calculation of foreign tourism receipts requires comprehensive and as well as expensive organization. In recent years, initiatives by public authorities, visitor questionnaires being applied to collect information to overcome these difficulties. The similar approaches are appeared to be adopted in Turkey. The objective of this study is to develop a applicable technical framework that enable concerned parties to determine net tourism receipts which encompasses and take into consideration required investments, imports of consumable goods and services, savings, taxes, education in abroad, employment of foreign personnel, and marketing expenditures in abroad, - leakage items- that are leaked losses from domestic economy which altogether have to be assumed in order to generate those expected tourism revenues. In the end, the share of tourism revenues in the national economy could be defined more accurately. One of the major purposes of the study is to facilitate understanding of the tourism sector in Turkish economy better by elaborating scientific findings of the research. Additionally, a more accurate social-economic cost benefit analysis could become applicable since foreign exchange leakages arised from required investments expenditures and other costs assumed to generate tourism revenues together with saving and tax losses leaked from the economy could be more accurately defined. Determination of the amount of leakages in the sector should not be viewed a factor that needs to be taken into consideration only in calculating revenues, but also in determination the magnitude of multiplier. Because, the multiplier is one of the most important parameter in evaluating a sector's efficiency in economic sense on which leakage has a profound effect Therefore it could be claimed that, in order to provide more accurate estimate of benefits of the tourism sector to the national economy, the calculation of leakage is a prerequisite.In this study, a model developed to calculate leakages of tourism revenues in Turkey by utilizing various secondary data sources including; SSI satellite accounts of tourism 1996 - 1998; SSI Input - Output Table, 1996; SSI Annual Statistical Almanacs; Sectoral Financial Statements by Central Bank Of Republic of Turkey; Economic and Social Indicators by SPO; Treasury Undersecretary Statistics; and Foreign Investment Reoports. Also unpublished dissertations, some internally generated and used document form various institutions and internet sources has been used.Key words; Economic effects of toursim, tourism receipts, leakage, tourism multiplier, input-output analysis, satellite accounts.