Tourist arrivals & Tourist expenditures: An investigation of determinants and interactions at international level

Abstract

[eng] Tourism demand modelling has been one of the most popular research topics in the recent five decades because of the strong practicality to the public and private marketers. The determinants of the tourism demand used in the last century have already been analysed in deep by previous literature, however, the choice of the most appropriate tourism demand variable to be used has been scarcely discussed. In macro level tourism studies, the empirical analysis of tourism demand has considered both the tourist expenditures and the number of tourists. However, from a theoretical point of view, both of them are interrelated. Focusing on the analysis of tourism destinations (at country level) and using traditional main determinants (income, prices, climate conditions, coastline,…), the differences in the role of these determinants are investigated in reference to the tourist demand variables used in empirical exercises and the relationship between them will be demonstrated. The results show how most of the tourism demand determinants at the destination affect total expenditures through influencing the number of the tourists rather than the average tourist expenditure, which helps to develop the strategic management decisions and policies in the destination.