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on Tourism Economics |
| By: | Eleni Gaki; Stella Kostopoulou; Evangelia Parisi; Dimitris Lagos |
| Abstract: | Tourism satisfaction is one of the most important components in the analysis of tourism behavior as, it not only affects the choice of tourism destination and the consumption of products, but also affects tourist?s future decision to return to the same destination. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the satisfaction of tourists visiting the Ionian Islands of Greece through quantitative methods that capture the factors influencing tourists? satisfaction and their choice to revisit those destinations, the relationship between them and the consideration of the causes that shape tourism behavior. Field research was conducted at four Ionian islands, namely Corfu, Zakynthos, Lefkada and Kefalonia. Those islands have functional interdependencies and are sensitive to influences from mainland regions. The conclusions of the research reveal the factors that affect tourism satisfaction, the relationships among those factors, the relationship between satisfaction and the revisit to a destination, the assessment of satisfaction according to the segmentation of tourists regarding their motive, the usability of information in satisfaction and the impact of the tourism experience in travel behavior. The tourism policy recommendations arising from the results of this research can lead to the diversification and the enrichment of the tourism product, but also to a further increase of the satisfaction of tourists visiting the Ionian Islands in Greece. |
| Keywords: | tourism satisfaction; tourism behavior; market segmentation; Ionian Islands of Greece |
| JEL: | L L O R Y Z3 Z32 Z |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa16p295&r=tur |
| By: | Jamie Chen; Chrysanthi Balomenou; Peter Nijkamp; Panoraia Poulaki; Dimitris Lagos |
| Abstract: | Yachting tourism is an emerging industry in coastal regions, particularly in the Mediterranean countries. The rising success of yachting tourism induces a significant boom in its relevant business segments. As a type of leisure tourism, yachting tourism plays a big role in an experience economy, and its positive impact on coastal regions has meant a substantial contribution to the local economy. Greece has many (potential) advantages to acquire a dominant position in developing a yachting tourism industry, such as authentic local attractions, natural coastal resources, etc. However, since the appearance of the current global financial crisis in 2007, the yachting tourism industry in this country has manifested a clear downturn, while the implementation of some austerity measures have aggravated the economic prospects. Meanwhile, the intense industry competition from some neighboring countries prompt a big challenge on the sustainability of the Greek yachting tourism industry. The main objective of our research is to map out the backgrounds and environments of the unfortunate situation. On the one hand, we compare Greek yachting tourism sector with similar sectors in other competitive Mediterranean countries, in order to identify the problems in strategic policy-making. On the other hand, we conduct extensive field research on yacht users and other stakeholders, in order to model and understand the factors relevant to its sustainable development. For achieving the aforementioned aims, both theoretical research in sustainability and the empirical aspects of the Greek yachting tourism industry will be allowed. The modelling results demonstrate that relevant industry policies have influenced the sustainability of the Greek yachting tourism negatively; our comparative study prospects also new knowledge to guide the sustainable development of the Greek yachting tourism from the perspective of other countries? strategies. Furthermore, the field surveys of yacht users and other stakeholders allow us to identify the relevant factors of sustainability in the Greek yachting tourism industry. In addition, our study sheds also new light on the emerging research field of the yachting tourism economy, and it leads to an enrichment of traditional tourism research. As our empirical research focusses in particular on the Greek yachting tourism industry, our findings provide practical guidance for the development of the Greek yachting industry in a long run. |
| Keywords: | yachting; tourism; sustainability; Greece |
| JEL: | C L L O R Y Z3 Z32 Z |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa16p293&r=tur |
| By: | Kadhim Magdid Braim; Scott McCabe; Jillian Rickly; Mohamed Gadi |
| Abstract: | Tourism has multiple economic benefits for host countries that receive tourists. Policy makers are becoming more and more aware of the importance that appropriate tourism management has to maximise the benefits that tourism flows can bring. However, many developing countries suffer from a lack of an integrated tourism policy. Particular issues are faced in those countries that are dealing with local conflicts (sometimes over many years). These countries often lack investment in tourism resources even though they might have a huge potential and are rich in heritage and cultural assets. Conflict always changes the priorities of nations, and poses many challenges to the policy, and management for developing tourism as a viable economic sector. Post-conflict areas have barriers to tourism development, such as poor or damaged infrastructure, lack of services, low investment, political instability, a need to maximize revenue income, and the lack of planned tourism management. A current example of such a conflict area is Kurdistan. In 2013, the number of tourists were 2,952 027, yet in 2014 and 2015 the number had decreased to 1529434 and 1117501 respectively (General Board of Tourism, Kurdistan Regional Government, 2016). In addition, as a result of popular uprisings that occurred across the Middle East, there was a decline of 8% in tourism growth in these destination regions during 2011 (UNWTO, 2012). There is much research about cultural tourism management issues, challenges, sustainability, but there is a lack of studies undertaken to know how post-conflict issues interact or change or the effects of emergent situations on cultural and heritage tourism planning and management. Kurdistan, which is largely defined as a northern region of modern Iraq, can be considered one of the longest conflict areas since the end of World War 1, and has suffered from neglect of investment in its economic infrastructure over many decades. After the new Kurdistan self-governing region was recognised officially by the Iraqi government in 2003, there has been a sharp increase in the number of tourism arrivals, in particular, in last ten years, due to its location, climate and heritage. Tourism is seen as an important economic sector in Kurdistan and specifically leisure tourism. However, there is still wide scope to increase tourism in Kurdistan based on its diversity of cultures and cultural heritage sites. The UN World Tourism Organization estimated that cultural tourism currently accounts for 37% of the aggregate tourism in the world (Boyd, 2002; McKercher and Cross, 2002). Such potentially profitable tourism resources in Kurdistan has been neglected so far for the purpose of tourism. This paper aims to fill this gap and explore potentials and issues for developing cultural tourism in post conflict areas and in new autonomous regions such as Kurdistan, and to understand what cultural tourist strategy should be designed and implemented to develop tourism sector in Kurdistan to be successful, competitive and sustainable. By looking of the perspective of different stakeholders in Kurdistan, the study can understand the challenges and opportunities in developing cultural tourism in post conflict areas. The paper reports data from a series of focus groups conducted with residents and tourist, and in-depth interviews with policy makers and tourism experts in Erbil, Kurdistan, in 2015. |
| Keywords: | ??? |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa16p994&r=tur |
| By: | Jingjing Liu; Peter Nijkamp |
| Abstract: | Along with the globalization and information-economic epoch, international knowledge spillover plays an important role in regional development, and the regional innovation system becomes more and more open-ended. As a nexus of the destination and the outside world, inbound tourism brings various economic and social resources for the development of the host region, which may also contribute to a higher level of cognitive proximity and absorptive capability as well as to greater product variety and manifold consumption externalities. Much research has addressed the influence of innovation on the tourism industry development, but only a few studies have focused on the impact of tourism on innovation. This study focusses on the influence of inbound tourism on a regional innovation system. The aims of this research are to: (1) interpret the mechanism of how inbound tourism impacts regional innovation; (2) inquire the external influence factors of the performance of inbound tourism; (3) explore the different characteristics of these effects when considering different types of innovation; (4) revisit the Tourism-Led Growth (TLG) hypothesis, and consider whether innovation can be a new vehicle to explain the influence of inbound tourism on spatial economic development. The influence of inbound tourism on innovation will provide a new perspective for analyzing the long term impact of tourism development. Furthermore, it may also be a meaningful complement to studies on the relationship between immigration, culture diversity and innovation, especially in the context of developing regions. Our study is organized as follows. First, the theoretical framework and the related hypotheses on the interaction between inbound tourism and regional innovation are presented. The network structure and diverse demands approaches as well as the effect of the regional absorptive capacity are considered and highlighted. Next, data from 30 Chinese Mainland provinces (Tibet being excluded, because part of the important indicators are unavailable) for the years 2003-2012 are used for the empirical analysis. The data come from the Chinese Patent Statistical Yearbook, the Chinese Statistical Yearbook, and the China Economic & Industry Data Database. From a methodical perspective, an entropy method and a perpetual inventory method were undertaken to measure the key variables. Next, a descriptive analysis was used to reach a preliminary idea on the above relationship. As to the existence of spatial autocorrelation, spatial panel data analysis was conducted to test these hypotheses. The study finds that inbound tourism is a driving force for a regional innovation system in China and can bring a new life to regional economic development. Firstly, inbound tourism appears to have a direct and indirect impact on regional innovation, while absorptive capacity has a significant mediating effect in this relationship. Secondly, the impact of inbound tourism on regional innovation capacity tends to be stronger in the wealthier and more international-oriented provinces. Thirdly, the effect of inbound tourism on technological innovation is mostly weaker than that of social innovation. Fourthly, this study supports the TLG hypothesis with regional innovation as the mediating variable. |
| Keywords: | Inbound tourism; regional innovation; absorptive capability; spatial panel data analysis; China. |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa16p600&r=tur |
| By: | Stella Karoulia; Eleni Gaki; Stella Kostopoulou; Dimitrios Lagos |
| Abstract: | As the economic crisis becomes more intense, affecting regions? economic activities to different degrees, new issues have aroused regarding the ability of each region to respond positively to these changes by maintaining its performance at high levels. As a result, the notion of resilience, and in particular economic resilience, has become a field of study for many researchers. Regional economic resilience is defined as the ability of a region to recover successfully from shocks that affect its economy. The term has two meanings: the first one is based on equilibrium analysis, in which resilience is the ability of a region to return to a pre-existing state in a single equilibrium system and the second one defines resilience in terms of complex adaptive systems and refers to the region?s ability to adjust and change as response to sudden pressures, shocks and negative impacts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of economic crisis on Greek regions and to assess the displayed degree of resilience. More specifically we focus on regional resilience regarding tourism industry. Tourism, an important economic activity and a fast growing industry worldwide, is one of the main ?sources of income for many countries, including Greece. Its importance and contribution to Greek economy is significant, especially given the poor performance of most other economic sectors. In 2014 tourism?s contribution to GDP was more than 20%. According to the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), in 2014 the volume of paid employment provided by the tourism industry increased by 23 percent. During July 2014, Greece?s tourism industry generated 137,139 jobs, compared to the same month in 2013. For the purposes of the paper we will use data for three periods: 2007 (i.e. the beginning of the crisis), 2010 (i.e. on the middle of the crisis), 2013 (i.e. on the peak of the crisis). Data refer to NUTS 2 regions and involve: 1) GVA for the tourism industry, 2) Employment in the tourism sector, 3) Number of arrivals (national and international tourists), 4) Number of nights spent (national and international tourists), 5) Number of establishments, 6) Number of available beds. A first analysis of the above data shows that tourism was affected slightly by the economic crisis. In fact, some regions showed an increase on specific tourism indicators. Decrease has been observed on data referring to national tourists, GVA and employment. In order to assess the regions? degree of resilience we introduce an index which is formed by the aforementioned indicators and reveals if a region is economically resilient, shock resistant or non- resilient. Results show that the country?s tourism industry could be considered as resilient. Nevertheless, there are significant variations in the resilience of tourism among regions. It is noticeable that the degree of resilience depends on the region?s geographical position i.e. whether it is a mainland or an island region. As a result new issues have aroused regarding the investments on tourism per region and the necessity for a regional tourism planning and policies. |
| Keywords: | Greece; economic crisis; tourism industry; regional economic resilience |
| JEL: | R11 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa16p691&r=tur |