About

Summary

Acorn was engaged by the People’s Committee for Tourism and the World Tourism Organization to provide a series of interventions over two years to assist with the development of a system of tourism statistics and to assess the growth of tourism in the country under various development scenarios.  A one-week training course on tourism statistics and market research was included and attended by over 30 staff involved in the tourism sector from across Libya.

Our Approach

The project commenced with a review of the existing system of tourism statistics, and developed a comprehensive manual and action plan for the implementation of a robust system for the measurement and tracking of tourist arrivals and expenditure, accommodation, tourism businesses, and evaluating the economic impact of tourism.

This was followed by the development of an action plan for the implementation of a computerised integrated tourism statistical system to assist with the collection of tourism related data, and to generate the required statistics reports. On the conclusion of this work, a one week tourism statistics training course was delivered that included sessions on measuring inbound and outbound visitors, measuring visitor expenditure, measuring the tourism supply, the development of tourism databases, and interpreting statistics and using them for marketing.

The final phase of the study was to develop a tourism demand model for the period 1997 to 2017 which generated a range of outputs depending on external factors such as the lifting of the UN embargo on direct flights, the availability of alcohol, and the easing of visa requirements.  The outputs of the model were visitor arrivals and receipts in Libya, number of rooms required and new rooms to be built, costs of hotel construction and airport refurbishment to cope with the demand, and net tourism earnings.

Outcome

The study provided the People’s Committee for Tourism with a clear way forward to measure the sector, complementing a tourism master plan which was completed in 1998.  Over the next 10 years, Libya opened up considerably to tourism with the UN air embargo lifted, and direct flights resumed from many key source markets in Europe and Africa.  Historical tourism started to flourish, until a civil war erupted in 2011 following the Arab Spring.