This chapter compares the growth performance of 14 'tourism countries' from a sample of 143 countries, observed during the 1980-95 period. It is shown that small tourism countries (STCs) grew significantly faster than all other sub-groups considered in the analysis (OECD, oil, LDC, and small). Moreover, it is shown that the reason why they grow faster is not that they are poorer than average, that they have particularly high saving/investment propensities or that they are very open to trade. Tourism specialization appears to be an independent determinant of growth performance. A corollary of this finding is that being small is far from a disadvantage if tourism is a key sector of the economy.