TOURISM AS A STRATEGY TO DIVERSIFY EXPORTS: LESSONS FROM MAURITIUS
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infrastructure prompted by tourism development is another channel through which tourism can help promote exports in other sectors. In the health sector, medical tourism clearly has an impact on the level of standards: in Bangalore, India, for the first time, a multispecialty tertiary care hospital received the ISO 9001:2000 certification for quality management. Whether, in this specific case, local people actually benefit from the new standards is another issue, but nothing prevents an economy from developing two types of industries: one to produce at local standards meeting domestic needs and another to produce at international standards for the purpose of export. Eventually, when the latter industry becomes very competitive, it can contribute to improving local standards and quality of life (an example is the positive spillover effects of health services trade in the region of Marrakesh, Morocco).
CONCLUSION
Tourism has been and remains a pathway to development and export diversification for a number of countries at different stages of trade integration. This opportunity is not equally available to all, however, and certain conditions must prevail to enter the tourism market successfully. There is therefore an opportunity cost to investing in tourism development, in particular in countries with fragile security and political instability, few natural endowments, and poor environmental management capacity. Not all regions can—or should—invest billions of dollars in leisure and tourism as the Persian Gulf region has done. On one hand, tourism can have important spillover effects on the domestic economy and can constitute a vehicle for exports in other sectors. On the other hand, negative social and environmental externalities and the problem of leakage have tarnished the image of the sector. In practice, international hotel chains often prefer sourcing products locally when they can. The challenge for policy makers then is to create a business environment that brings international tourism operators and local producers together and enables the latter to meet the required product and marketing standards on a consistent basis. One of the key features of tourism that distinguish Mauritius from less successful cases is the positive and proactive role of the government. First, in the early days, public authorities worked closely with private developers