This article revisits the tourism-growth nexus in Malaysia using time series quarterly data over the period 1975–2013. The authors examine the impact of tourism using two separate indicators – tourism receipts per capita and visitor arrivals per capita. Using the augmented Solow production function and the autoregressive distributed lag bounds procedure, they also incorporate trade openness and financial development and account for structural breaks in series. The results show the evidence of cointegration between the variables. Assessing the long-run results using both indicators of tourism demand, it is noted that the elasticity coefficient of tourism is 0.13 and 0.10 when considering visitor arrivals and tourism receipts (in per capita terms), respectively. Notably, the impact of tourism demand is marginally higher with visitor arrivals. The elasticity of trade openness is 0.19, that of financial development is 0.09 and that of capital share is 0.15. In the short run, the coefficient of tourism is marginally negative, and for financial development and trade openness, it is 0.01 and 0.18, respectively. The Granger causality tests show bidirectional causation between tourism and output per capita, financial development and tourism and trade openness and tourism demand, duly indicating the feedback or mutually reinforcing impact between the variables and providing evidence that tourism is central to enhancing the key sectors and the overall income level.

In this article, we study the effect of ICT on tourism demand in nine major tourist destinations based on visitor arrivals. Mobile and broadband subscriptions are used to proxy for ICT. Additionally, we account for price, source country’s income, and the destination’s income. Balanced panels for the period 1995–2017 and 2002–2017 are used for mobile and broadband subscriptions, respectively. The pooled mean group approach is used for estimation. The results indicate a 1% increase in mobile subscriptions and broadband would increase international visitor arrivals by 0.04% and 0.11%, respectively. The elasticity coefficients of price and income are −0.71 and 1.58, respectively, based on the mobile subscription model, and −0.88 and 1.83, respectively, based on broadband subscription. The destination’s income has only a short-run positive association with tourism demand. The causality results indicate that ICT cause tourism demand, and support for technology-led growth hypothesis in the major tourist destinations.