The Impact of the Digital Economy on the Development of the Tourism and Travel Sector in the Arab World

With the development of digital technologies and the entry of their applications into the tourism industry sector, researchers have wondered about the extent to which this contributes to providing information and data, supporting the marketing and sales processes, reducing costs, the emergence of new tourism business models, and enhancing the activity and growth of the tourism and travel sector, as measured by the Tourism and Travel Development Index (TTDI). Therefore, the aim of this research is to determine whether the improvement in the level of the Digital Economy Index (DEI) which is based on several factors related to digital technology infrastructure, has an impact on the development of the tourism and travel sector for a selected group of Arab countries during the period (2018- 2023). After conducting the appropriate statistical tests, it was found that the Fixed Effect model was the most suitable for the nature of the data used in this research. The results indicated that the progress of Arab countries on the digital economy index positively contributed to the development of the tourism and travel sector in those countries at a 5% statistical significance level. The analysis also revealed that the growth in per capita GNP had a positive and statistically significant impact on the tourism sector. The research recommended that the governments of the various Arab countries continue to develop and improve digital infrastructure and support the digital economy to achieve the highest levels of sustainable tourism development.