Hotels; catering; tourism and Employment

Overview

The travel and tourism industry is one of the largest and most dynamic industries in today’s global economy. Travel and tourism is human resource intensive and it is expected by the end of 2007 that Travel and tourism will account for 10.3 % of global GDP.

One job in the core tourism industry creates roughly one and a half additional (indirect) jobs in the tourism related economy. Therefore the travel and tourism economy creates (directly and indirectly) more than 230 million jobs, which represent some 8% of the global workforce. Women make up between 60 and 70% of the labour force and half of the workers are age 25 or under. The industry is growing worldwide by over 4% per year.

The ILO's mission is to support the decent work employment, development prospects, gender and social dialogue opportunities of this sector.

Useful links/resources

• World Tourism and Travel Council
• World Tourism Organization
• ILO Bureau of Statistics