Tourism revenue figures for a region describe money arriving, not money staying. A substantial portion departs again through channels that are largely invisible to the traveller.
Bookings are captured upstream
Flights, packages and online accommodation platforms are usually operated by companies headquartered elsewhere, and their commission is taken before any local business is paid.
For a package holiday the traveller may never make a payment inside the destination country at all.
What arrives locally is the residual after those intermediaries have taken their share, which is why headline spending figures overstate local benefit.
Imports follow the guests
Resorts serving international visitors typically stock imported food, drink and furnishings, either because guests expect them or because local supply cannot meet volume and consistency requirements.
Every imported item sends part of the guest's payment back out through the supplier, and the effect is strongest in small island economies with limited agriculture.
The counterweight is procurement policy. A kitchen buying produce, fish and dairy locally keeps a much larger share of the same menu price in the region.
Ownership determines where profit lands
Wages stay local when staff are local. Profit stays local only when the owner is.
Foreign-owned hotels repatriate surplus to shareholders elsewhere, and the same applies to tour operators, dive centres and transport firms.
This is the difference between a community-owned lodge and an externally owned one with local staff. Both employ people, but only one retains the margin.
Enclave layouts cut the surrounding economy out
All-inclusive resorts and cruise itineraries are designed so guests rarely spend outside the operator's own facilities.
The design is commercially rational and it works, which is exactly why local restaurants and shops near such properties often see little trade.
Cruise calls are the sharper case, since passengers sleep and eat aboard and typically spend a few hours ashore on operator-sold excursions, leaving port fees and a thin retail trade behind.
The same structure appears inland wherever transport, accommodation and activities are sold as one product by a single operator, because each additional service absorbed into the package is one fewer local transaction.
What reduces leakage in practice
Booking directly with locally owned accommodation removes one intermediary and keeps the payment inside the destination.
Eating outside the property, using local guides hired directly, and taking public or locally owned transport each shift spending past the same chokepoints.
None of this requires spending more. It changes which hands the money passes through, which is the variable that determines whether tourism income reaches households.