Tourism foreign direct investment as a governance tool: institutionalisation, evolution, and capital flow geographies

Tourism foreign direct investment (TFDI) has become an institutionalised instrument of international investment governance through policy frameworks, statistical standardisation and investment reporting that make cross-border tourism investment internationally comparable. Its institutionalisation, global evolution, and regional geographies are examined through documentary analysis combined with a harmonised reconstruction of annual data for 2013–2023 from successive United Nations Tourism and fDi Intelligence Tourism Investment Reports. The reconstructed dataset enables analysis of announced capital, projects, and estimated direct jobs through relational indicators of capital–project–labour configurations. The global trajectory identifies a transition from relative stability through exceptional capital expansion to a post-pandemic investment configuration characterised by smaller projects and lower labour intensity. Regional analysis identifies differentiated investment geographies characterised by contrasting territorial hierarchies, investment functions and capital–project–labour configurations, including hierarchical polycentrism in Asia-Pacific, Gulf-centred corporate coordination, dense mature tourism markets in Europe, selective metropolitan gateways in North America and labour-intensive destination incorporation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Internationally standardised tourism investment reporting provides a common governance framework for reconstructing global trajectories and analysing differentiated regional geographies, demonstrating how tourism investment is selectively organised across territories and over time.