Written by: Madison Sterling
With spring break approaching this week, many families are looking to flee Wisconsin for a change of scenery. College students all around the country are also looking to go to tropical locations with friends during March and April, increasing the demand for flights, hotels, and restaurants. Without these spring break travelers, gross domestic product in vacation cities and countries would not be as high as they are.
Beach towns, such as Panama City, face some opportunity costs dealing with the amount of beaches that become overcrowded, pollution, and the vast amounts of heavy drinkers, which can lead to some minor crime. According to Bob Warren, executive director of the Bay County Tourist Development Council, “Spring break is controversial because it’s about young people who want to have a good time. There are people down here who don’t necessarily approve, but I don’t think many Florida communities would want to turn down generating $170 million in the month of March.” The amount of revenue generated from spring breakers overrules the minor inconveniences the city faces. The money spent on spring break is also a great indication as to how our economy is doing because when there’s more money transferring from student’s and vacationer’s bank accounts into liquid cash at restaurants and entertainment, there is a flow of money that helps to boost the economy.
Tourism in Mexico is also extremely important with 8.9% of its GDP coming from tourism alone. 29.2% of Mexico’s GDP also came from transportation services, 24.8% from restaurants and bars, 12.7% from hotels and lodging, 12.3% from commerce, 11.4% from handicrafts, and the remaining 9.6% from miscellaneous activities (fluxcapacitator39). These numbers show just how important tourism is for Mexico’s economy, which correlates to how important these numbers stay up for employment rates. According to howmuch.net, “most of the countries that are most reliant on their tourism industry for GDP are poor or have a relatively small population and therefore economy.” So looking at the map below it’s shown that Mexico and other vacation country’s business cycles heavily rely on tourism.
Without the heavy amounts of tourism in these select countries, gross domestic product would be much lower without the spring break season.
Overall, the spring break season plays a crucial role in gross domestic product and our economy as a whole.
Works Cited
Jones, Roland. “Sea, Sun, Sand... and Revenue.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group,
8 Mar. 2004, www.nbcnews.com/id/4428577/ns/business-us_business/t/sea-sun-sand-revenue/#.WrPG6WrwbIV.
fluxcapacitor39. “How Does Tourism Affect Mexico's Economy.” Storify, 2018 Storify, 2012,
www.storify.com/fluxcapacitor39/how-does-tourism-affect-mexico-s-economy.
Raul. “Which Countries Are Most Dependent on the Travel Industry?” HowMuch, HowMuch, 26
Apr. 2017, https://howmuch.net/articles/travel-tourism-economy-2017
For people who live in non-tourist locations, we forget about the impact tourism has on places like Florida and Mexico. Many of these places have dedicated tourist-aimed companies. Rentals are tours are huge during the summer and during spring break. These cities and places are sometimes rolling in money because they offer services that tourists can't find anywhere near their homes.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to look at the economic impacts on locations that are not common tourist locations. There's probably a lot less growth than places like Florida. However, in places like Pewaukee, there's probably an influx of consumer consumption during Spring Break, because all kinds of people have more time to do things like visit restaurants and spend money.
DeleteIt's crazy to see how much some countries depend on tourism to help with their GDP. In Wisconsin, we don't see much tourism, but warmer states such as Florida and California get a lot of tourism especially during spring break. It would be interesting to see how big of a affect there would be on a country's GDP if there was no such thing as Spring Break.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Spring Break is a big money maker for our economy as most of us have witnessed it first hand on vacations. What I would like to see is the negative impacts on communities such as our own when everyone departs of these vacations.
ReplyDelete