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on Tourism Economics |
| By: | Johan Hattingh (Central University of Technology, Free State) |
| Abstract: | As one of the largest industries in the world, the tourism industry has a positive economic impact on countries. This is especially true for developing countries where tourism is an essential driver for economic growth and development. In this regard Africa and specifically Southern Africa has plenty to offer tourists. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a regional economic community comprising fifteen member states, namely Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (SADC, 2017). The tourism industry in the SADC region has been growing rapidly and the region has prioritized tourism as a means of promoting economic development and regional integration (SADC, 2017). For the fulfillment of these goals, a protocol on the development of tourism was created. The protocol aims to use tourism as a means for sustainable development drawing on the region?s natural and cultural resources (SADC, 2017). Southern Africa has large rural areas and many communities in need of local economic development (LED). LED is thus an on-going concern. Route tourism is often seen as a means to attract tourists to rural areas and to ensure that product owners, community members and governments are involved in a coordinated way (World Bank, 2017). The paper intends to reflect on the local economic development activities of two areas in Southern Africa where local economic development tourism has been contemplated. This includes the Maloti Drakensberg Tourism Route in South Africa and the Four Deserts Tourism Route in southern Namibia. The aim of the paper is to contribute theoretically and empirically to the development of approaches that enable growth for rural areas and to identify how LED has been implemented or not in the two study areas. Although the paper reflects a southern African perspective it will provide valuable insights applicable to other local economic tourism initiatives. |
| Keywords: | Sustainable tourism development,local economic development, Southern Africa, Maloti Drakensberg Route, Four Deserts Tourism Route, South Africa, Namibia. |
| JEL: | L83 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:7308974&r=tur |
| By: | Silvia Altmark (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Estadística); Karina Larruina (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Estadística); Gabriela Mordecki (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze Uruguayans living abroad that visit Uruguay for their holidays, what in the literature is called Nostalgic tourism or Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism. Several studies point Uruguay as one of the South American countries with the largest proportion of its population living abroad. In addition, tourism is a very important economic activity in Uruguay. Visitors from Argentina have been always the majority in the Uruguayan inbound tourism. During 2017 in Uruguay 68% of total tourists were Argentinians, 12,5% Brazilians, and 8% VFR tourists. This last share was near 16% during the first decade of this century and even higher in the XXth. century. We analyze and estimate the VFR tourism demand in Uruguay, and compare it with Argentinian tourist demand, since the majority of VFR tourists live in Argentina (64%). After characterizing VFR tourists, we apply Johansen methodology and built four models: two for VFR tourism and two for Argentinian tourism, considering monthly data for the number of tourists and quarterly data for tourists’ expenditure. Applying Johansen methodology, we found at least one Vector error-correction model (VEC) equation for each model considered. In the first two models (taking into account the number of tourists), the elasticities (income and prices) were smaller for VFR tourists compared with Argentinian tourists, meaning that the number of VFR tourists react less to changes in income or relative prices than Argentinians. But in the case of tourists’ expenditure, the result was the opposite, with VFR tourists responding more to changes in prices or income than Argentinians. Impulse response functions show a greater reaction of Argentinian tourists to changes in relative prices, but similar in the case of an income shock. Finally, forecasts show a good adjust of the forecast to actual data. |
| Keywords: | VFR tourism, real exchange rate, Uruguay, cointegration |
| JEL: | C22 F41 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-08-18&r=tur |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | Investment is essential to build a competitive and sustainable tourism sector. This Tourism Paper examines effective policy approaches to boost the quantity and quality of investment in tourism. It reviews the enabling conditions and barriers to promoting investment that can foster sustainable and inclusive tourism growth. Policy considerations to encourage quality investment in tourism are discussed, including the importance of cross-government co-ordination, leveraging strategies to maximise the quality and impact of tourism investment, mainstreaming sustainability into investment decision-making frameworks, and building capacity to future-proof tourism investment in a digital economy. Case studies of investment approaches in a number of countries are presented to support the policy discussion. |
| Keywords: | digital economy, finance, governance, infrastructure, leverage, mainstreaming sustainability, policy, quality investment, tourism |
| Date: | 2018–11–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:cfeaab:2018/02-en&r=tur |
| By: | Benjawan Yotrawat (Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University) |
| Abstract: | One of the strengths of Thai tourism is the high standard of service quality of Thai hotels. Therefore, it is vital for Thai hotel industry to maintain and ameliorate the service quality in a sustainable way. The question is whether the high standard of service quality meets with customers? expectation or not. The purposes of this research were to examine the level of satisfaction in ten areas of services from the perspectives of international tourists whether their expectations of the service quality have been met or not. The population of study included all international tourists who visited Thailand the first quarter of year 2018. A total of 400 samples was interviewed with English questionnaire. The findings revealed that in general the respondents had a very high expectation of service quality and the majority of their expectations in ten areas of services had been fulfilled. There were two areas of service quality that needed to be improve which were transportation services and ability to communicate in other languages such as Russia, Arabic, and Chinese. |
| Keywords: | Service Quality, Customer Expectation, International Tourists |
| JEL: | Y80 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:8810433&r=tur |
| By: | Hafdís Björg Hjálmarsdóttir (University of Akureyri); Vera Kristín Kristjánsdóttir (Akureyri University) |
| Abstract: | Tourism has become a vital part of the Icelandic economy. Iceland has experienced an extremely rapid growth in visitor numbers over the recent years. Visitors? numbers have grown annually at a rate of 20-30%. In the recent years, the relative growth has been larger outside of the summer season. Iceland has been remarkably successful over the past years at attracting new visitors. According to the Icelandic Tourist Board surveys, one of the main reasons visitors come to Iceland is because of the distinctive nature. Visitors come with certain expectations to Iceland. In addition, many factors influence their expectations. Marketing and promotion work from both public and private sectors and the content that the visitors are sharing themselves on the social media platform. The reason for this presentation is that the authors saw a comment from one tour operator in Iceland who was found guilty for giving misleading messages to visitors. According to the theory of integrated marketing communication, it is important to send out the same message and information on every communication platform. All promotional tools have to be integrated as well as it is necessary to build realistic expectations, so it will not come to disappointments among visitors. Main goal of this presentation is to outline a research the authors conducted on promotion material from some main tourist operators in Iceland. The authors chose tour operators from public and private sectors and analyzed their promotion material, and the way they promote themselves according to the theories of IMC. Because Icelandic nature is by far the largest factor attracting visitors, as such, the most valuable resource for the tourism, it is important to preserve it. The authors emphasized to analyze how the nature appeared in the promotion material.The main results are that Icelandic tour operators are sending out misleading messages to foreign visitors. |
| Keywords: | Icelandic tourism, nature, communication, sensitive wilderness, |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:7309522&r=tur |
| By: | Julie Wen (Western Sydney > University) |
| Abstract: | Volunteer tourism has been growing as an important segment of youth tourism. This paper takes Meixian Team ( Meixian Dui) as the case study. College students in Guangzhou, Southeast China, ride bicycles to rural China to help with primary teaching in rural Guangdong Province. By means of in-depth interviews, the research attempts to analyse their reflection and personal experience in relation to their volunteer tours. Young volunteers developed their personalities during their journey of helping rural children with limited resource. There were diverse modes of personal and interpersonal interactions among the research respondents. These volunteer tourists manifested how their experience resulted in shifts in personal attitude and world views of Chinese colleague students. |
| Keywords: | Change, China, Rural, Travel, Volunteer |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:8110297&r=tur |
| By: | Havranek, Tomas; Zeynalov, Ayaz |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we examine the usefulness of Google Trends data in predicting monthly tourist arrivals and overnight stays in Prague during the period between January 2010 and December 2016. We offer two contributions. First, we analyze whether Google Trends provides significant forecasting improvements over models without search data. Second, we assess whether a high-frequency variable (weekly Google Trends) is more useful for accurate forecasting than a low-frequency variable (monthly tourist arrivals) using Mixed-data sampling (MIDAS). Our results stress the potential of Google Trends to offer more accurate prediction in the context of tourism: we find that Google Trends information, both two months and one week ahead of arrivals, is useful for predicting the actual number of tourist arrivals. The MIDAS forecasting model that employs weekly Google Trends data outperforms models using monthly Google Trends data and models without Google Trends data. |
| Keywords: | Google trends, mixed-frequency data, forecasting, tourism |
| JEL: | C53 L83 |
| Date: | 2018–11–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:90205&r=tur |
| By: | Chutima Mingkhwansakul (Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University) |
| Abstract: | The objectives of this study were to examine the level of the quality of Service of the hotel and lodging businesses in Samutsongkram province, Thailand to develop the guidelines for the development of their quality of service. The period of study was between October and November 2017. This study suggests that the entrepreneurs of the hotel and lodging businesses should focus on providing continuously development programs for their staff members. They should also utilize modern technologies in enhancing their service in all aspects to maximize the customer satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Quality of service; hotel and lodging businesses; Samutsongkram province |
| JEL: | Y80 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:8810431&r=tur |