ABSTRACT
Egon Smeral is a pioneer of tourism economics with a particular focus on modelling and forecasting tourism activities from the international trade perspective. The model that he developed can be viewed as a static partial model, and it explains country-specific tourism imports and exports based on payment flows at constant prices and exchange rates. Static partial models start out from a multi-stage budgeting process. A common research interest in tourism impact assessment led to another major research collaboration between Egon and Douglas Frechtling. Together they decided to do a survey on impact measurement. Growth theory was another research field that attracted Egon's interest. The rapid growth of tourism in many cities around the world has become apparent when compared with the dynamics of rural regions. Based on an analysis of data from Austrian regions, he found that, during the second half of the past decade, demand shifted considerably towards tourism-extensive urban regions as well as tourism-extensive intermediate and rural regions.
