Tourism has been positioned as a new growth driver in Indonesia’s RPJPN 2025–2045, yet Sumatra still shows a clear gap between its economic size and tourism performance. Although the island accounts for 21.02% of national GDP, its accommodation and food service sector contributes only 9.58% of national sectoral value added. This study examines tourism's potential as an integrated regional growth source in Sumatra using an updated 2025 Interregional Input-Output model. The analysis covers three tourism-related sectors (accommodation and food services, trade, transportation) and compares their combined impact with construction investment as a capacity-building scenario. The results show that transportation is the only key sector, confirming its role as the main structural connector of interregional tourism integration. Accommodation records the strongest growth momentum, providing the empirical basis for a catch-up strategy. The integrated scenario generates 2.73x more output than single-sector approach, indicating that narrow tourism modelling substantially understates economy-wide impacts. Effects are uneven across corridors, with Southern and Northern capturing much larger shares than Central Corridor. These findings suggest that tourism integration in Sumatra requires corridor differentiated policies to strengthen local value chains, improve interdestination connectivity, and align institutional support with specific conditions of each corridor.
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