Tourism Economics, 2012, 18 (6), 1175–1202 doi: 10.5367/te.2012.0172 Criteria for comparing economic impact models of tourism JEROEN KLIJS NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, Academy for Tourism, PO Box 3917, 4800 DX Breda, The Netherlands, and Department of the Social Sciences, Wageningen University,Wageningen, The Netherlands. E-mail: klijs.j@nhtv.nl. (Corresponding author.) WIM HEIJMAN Department of the Social Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. DIANA KORTEWEG MARIS NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, Breda, The Netherlands. JEROEN BRYON Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. There are substantial differences between models of the economic impacts of tourism. Not only do the nature and precision of results vary, but data demands, complexity and underlying assumptions also differ. Often, it is not clear whether the models chosen are appropriate for the specific situation to which they are applied. The goal of this article is to provide an overview and evaluation of criteria for the selection of economic impact models. A literature review produced 52 potential criteria, subdivided into 10 groups. Based on an analysis of experts’ opinions, the perceived importance of each criterion was determined and a set of essential criteria created. To illustrate the usage of these essential criteria, five models (export base, Keynesian, ad hoc, input–output and computable general equilibrium) were evaluated and compared based on their perform- ance on these criteria. This paper builds on the existing literature by showing that it is possible to make a more informed choice among economic impact models of tourism. Keywords: economic impact models; evaluation criteria; experts’ opinions This research was part-financed by the INTERREG IVA 2 Mers Seas Zeeën Cross-border Cooperation Programme 2007–2013, under grant number 03–007 – SusTRIP. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Furthermore, we want to acknowledge the contributions made by Ondrej Mitas, Roos Schoones, Jeroen Nawijn, Paul Peeters, Göksel Gocer and Berry van de Wouw. Our gratitude also goes to the 34 experts who were willing to participate in this research. Finally, we want to thank the journal reviewers and the editors for their constructive criticisms and suggestions.