BRI is a mega-development project covering 140 countries in three continents; Asia, Africa, and Europe. The political and economic dimensions of BRI have been studied in several studies in the literature, but the effect on tourism has been less explored. Tourism development has been linked with sustainable development goals due to its substantial economic potential. A panel dataset of 151 countries from 2000–2019 is used to analyze the effect of participation in BRI on the tourism industry. The PSM-DID model is used after testing the validity through the event-study approach. The robustness of the estimates was tested through counterfactual evidence and a placebo test. The findings show that participation in BRI has increased the number of inbound tourists by 18.4% and tourism revenues by 7%. BRI proved relatively more beneficial for the tourism industry of South Asian, Western Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. The regional difference can be attributed to tourist attraction spots, entry regulations for foreigners, the service quality of the tourism industry, and support facilities offered to tourists. The cooperation among the countries should be increased to facilitate tourists. Tourism companies can use these findings to improve their selection of target markets and future development plans.

Purpose: Technology parks (TPs) are used as a tool to improve economic outlook of the region through innovation generation. This study aims to evaluate the perception of tenants of TPs to determine the gap in the expectation and identify types of firms preferring to locate in a TP.Design/methodology/approach: This is the first study in Pakistan to collect data about perceived benefits of TPs in Pakistan from the decision-makers of 110 tenant firms. The cluster analysis and lift ratios are used to draw statistical inferences.Findings: The firms can be classified into three clusters – commercial-orientation firms, science and technology-oriented firms and young tech firms – with distinct needs for survival and growth in a TP. Moreover, TPs should not just be treated as property projects for providing support services, also knowledge sharing, training and development opportunities and proximity to hubs of knowledge and markets is vital to attract a variety of industry.Originality/value: Academia and policymakers have been equally interested in the potential impacts of these innovation hubs. However, there have been lack of empirical evidence on how and what to offer the incumbents of these TPs. The government of Pakistan is trying to build more TPs for promoting business activities under CPEC. Therefore, it is extremely important to determine the needs of tenants of TPs for successful utilization of huge amount of public money to be invested in TPs.