All people working at the airport, car rental place, independent taxi/tuk tuk transportation service providers, hotels, restaurants, sandwich shops, coffee shops, food markets and 'natural' tourist sites.   These are formulated estimates based on the people came to Laos at checkpoints, the length of their stay and their expected destination and 'activities'.

All US$550,000,000 worth?
I don't think so!
The hard working people you mentioned only make a fraction of that.

Who pockets all the money?


Of course individual's take home pay depends on the level of the organization or business that the individual is at.  The owner of the business will take home a bigger piece of a pie as expected (maybe 10-100 folds than the average indivual within the business in Laos). 

Also think about Vientiane and Vientiane has 800,000.  Most likely there are at least 250,000 of those that are able to work.  Since tourism is one of the main revenues for the city and let's estimate 100,000 of 250,000 are the primary, secondary and terrtiary supporters for  these tourists that are are coming into the city.  Do the math = 550,000,000/100,000 = $5500/individual/year.  $5500/year is a relatively small income comparing to other countries like Australia, USA and so on.... but good enough for the locals for the time being.   
Again to answer your question,   Some do make more than others .

A rule of thumb is that each tourist injects between $100 and $200 into the country's economy through their spending (accommodation, foo, transport, etc.)

Laosnow:

According the site provided by Somvang, a tourist spends approximately ~$130/per visit in Laos.

Everyone in Laos that provided products and services benefited from these tourists. Relatively speaking, $550 million is not much.

$550 Million, but I it's not equally distributed. Some business make way way more and some make less.



PEACE wrote on 14^th Sep, 2011 at 9:01am: