<![CDATA[Visitor arrivals dominate tourism performance reporting, yet tourism receipts need not expand proportionately with recorded trips. This study tests the arrivals–receipts relationship using 2,751 country-year observations from 189 countries and economies during 2002–2019, assembled from World Development Indicators tourism series. Pooled regressions are compared with country and year fixed effects, consecutive-year first differences, and sensitivity analyses involving long-reporting panels, outlier trimming, transport receipts and country-specific trends. The pooled arrivals elasticity is 0.954, but the preferred two-way fixed-effects estimate is 0.593 (95% CI 0.465–0.720); the annual first-difference estimate is 0.355. The proportional elasticity benchmark of one is rejected in the preferred model. A pre-period tourism-export-dependence interaction is not statistically distinguishable from zero. These results show that the positive cross-country association overstates the conditional within-country correspondence between arrival growth and nominal tourism receipts. The paper advances measurement-focused tourism economics by separating tourism volume from recorded monetary performance, and cautions against treating arrivals, nominal revenue, visitor expenditure, domestic value added and welfare as interchangeable outcomes. Destinations should evaluate visitor targets alongside harmonized receipt measures and direct indicators of locally retained value.]]>
