Tourism isn’t Broken, it’s Just Misunderstood

Tourism, But Smarter: Finding Clarity in a Crowded Industry
Tourism Isn’t Small, We Just Think About It That Way

From art to sport to food to festivals, tourism is woven into everyday life. This blog explores how the industry is misunderstood, why that matters, and how we can start recognising its full value.

Too often, tourism gets misunderstood. People think of it as vacations, hotels, or maybe a big summer festival. What they don’t always see is how dynamic it really is. Tourism is almost everything we do for fun; it’s culture, art, sport, food, activities, and experiences of every shape and size. From a breakdancing competition to the opera, from axe throwing to fishing lodges to Métis festivals, it’s all tourism.

The challenge is that tourism often hides in plain sight. We experience it without always naming it. A hockey game that sells out the local rink. A powwow that brings together families and visitors. A weekend food truck rally downtown. While these are separate sub-sectors with culture, sport, and entertainment, they’re all part of the tourism economy. But because we rarely frame them that way, tourism gets undervalued when decisions are made about where to invest or how to support growth.

So to frame this out a little more clearly, I'll put it into dollars; the Canadian tourism industry brings in about $130 billion dollars annually to our national GDP, North American tourism earns just under 2 trillion, and the global GDP is approximately $10.9 trillion.

This misunderstanding matters. If people only picture hotels and attractions when they hear “tourism,” they miss the true scale of what’s at stake. They miss the way it drives small town economies, employs young people, and sustains culture and community pride. Tourism doesn’t just bring visitors in, it creates ripple effects. Restaurants, retailers, gas stations, and even grocery stores benefit when people are moving around, exploring, and spending.

It also matters because visibility determines value. Industries that are seen as serious, complex, and essential tend to attract funding, investment, and attention. When tourism is dismissed as seasonal or secondary, it risks being treated as an add-on instead of a foundation. And yet, it is a foundation. It’s a sector that stretches into every community, large and small, and provides opportunity in ways many other industries cannot.

Part of what makes tourism so hard to pin down is also what makes it so powerful. It’s not one product or one market. It’s a web of experiences that cross boundaries and categories. It can be as simple as a local hiking trail or as elaborate as a national celebration. It can be rooted in heritage, in sport, in food, or in adventure. That breadth is not a weakness, it’s what makes tourism resilient and relevant everywhere.

The problem isn’t tourism itself. The problem is the system around it. The way it’s measured, supported, and marketed doesn’t always reflect its full value. Visitor counts and room nights tell part of the story, but not the whole picture. They don’t capture the teenager’s first job at the local fair, the cultural connection sparked by a music festival, or the pride of place that comes when people from around the world show up to celebrate what makes a community unique.

At Roamlii, this is why we focus on building digital infrastructure for tourism. Not to reinvent what already works, but to give it the visibility it deserves. To help small businesses, cultural organisations, and event organisers show up online in ways that travellers can actually find. To connect discovery with booking so curiosity can turn into action. Tourism doesn’t need to be rebuilt, it needs to be better recognised, better measured, and better supported.

So no, tourism isn’t small. It’s one of the most dynamic, wide-reaching sectors we have. The misunderstanding comes from how narrowly we define it. When we start to see tourism for what it really is, a driver of culture, community, and economic growth, we can stop treating it like a side industry and start supporting it like the powerhouse it already is.

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Let’s reframe tourism not as something fragile or fragmented, but as something vibrant and essential. #GetRoaming and let’s build the infrastructure that helps every part of tourism show up and shine.

Yours in tourism, innovation and startups,

Founder & CEO
Roamlii