THE IMPACT OF TOURISM ON GDP GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

Tourism represents one of the most important economic activities for the global economy. Over the last several decades, the tourism industry has been achieving substantial growth and development in the global market, as well as a positive direct and indirect impact on other economic activities. The paper aims to examine the connection between five tourism indicators and the growth of gross domestic product on the example of EU countries in the period from 2001 to 2019. The research included a total of six variables; the gross domestic product being the dependent variable, while the selected five tourism indicators were independent variables. The main aim of the paper is to determine which of the researched tourism indicators have a statistically significant impact on GDP growth. The empirical analysis is based on IBM SPSS linear mixed procedures. The main findings are that business tourism spending (BTS) and domestic tourism spending (DTS) can predict in a statistically significant and positive way the growth of the gross domestic product in European Union countries.