ABSTRACT
The increasing importance of international tourism in the balance of payments and in the creation of employment for both developed and developing economies has led to a large number of econometric studies on the determinants of international tourism demand over the past three decades. Witt and Witt (1995) provide a survey of the major studies. As noted by Lim (1997), however, although time series data are widely utilised in estimating tourism demand, few studies use cross-section or panel data. Exceptions are Carey (1991), Tremblay (1989), Witt (1980a, 1980b) and Yavas and Bilgin (1996), who pool their cross-section and time series data to estimate elasticities with respect to income, exchange rates, relative prices, transport costs and other explanatory variables for selected Caribbean countries, 18 European countries, UK, Germany and UK, and Turkey, respectively.
