Article

 

Labour Productivity and Competitiveness: an Initial Examination of the Hotels and Restaurants Sector in Selected Countries (p.63-79)

by

G. Anastassopoulos, University of Patras

V. Patsouratis, Athens University of Economics and Business

Keywords : Tourism, competitiveness, labour productivity, employment

JEL classification : J24, L83

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the market performance of tourism, productivity and employment. Previous studies have tested the hypothesis that cost and institutional factors are a major source of country differences in export shares in traditional sectors such as manufacturing. This study analyses the Hotels and Restaurants Sector (NACE 55) – one of the leading tourism sectors in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain with the highest degree of specialization - using a panel data set for 5 countries and 13 years (1990 – 2002). There is some evidence that labour productivity levels are important determinants in explaining competitive performance of these countries (i.e. the number of arrivals of non-resident tourists staying in hotels and similar establishments) in international markets. However, by keeping constant other exogenous (unobserved) variables, performance improvements of these countries, during this period, were found to be related more to increases in employment rather than to improvements in labour productivity.