Abstract
This special focus presents a selection of the best papers presented during the fifth QATEM ‘Quantitative Approaches in Tourism Economics and Management’ workshop, which was held in Potchefstroom by North-West University (South Africa), and co-organized by the University of Perpignan Via Domitia on 25 August 2016. The conference was supported by the CRESEM (EA 7397) laboratory and the research unit ‘Tourism Research in Economic Environ and Society’ (TREES). QATEM 2016 is the fifth event under a workshop series which provide an opportunity for gathering, analysing and debating state-of-the-art academic research on this theme. Many submissions have been received and the scientific committee only selected a few papers for presentation.
The guest editors identified among them three papers for this special focus of Tourism Economics. Indeed, we have been very keen to ensure that these papers make a substantial contribution to our understanding to one of the many quantitative approaches in tourism economics and management. Moreover, the papers chosen, by virtue of their mixed provenance, show the globalized nature of the QATEM workshop.
In the first paper, Engelina du Plessis and Melville Saayman from North-West University (South Africa) investigate the aspects of the tourism price competitiveness of South Africa as a destination. This paper innovates since unique aspects of price competitiveness are determined, which provide useful recommendations for economic policy.
In the second paper, Laurent Botti and Hanitra Rakotondramaro from the University of Perpignan (France) combine portfolio theory with utility function to incorporate the risk attitude of the decision maker through different values of risk tolerance in the tourism sector. A case study on foreign overnight stays in France from European tourists is proposed. This contribution opens new avenues for making decisions when role players have different risk attitudes.
In the third paper, Yasuo Ohe from Chiba University (Japan) explores the economics of rural and educational tourism in dairy farms with a focus on operator identity. The formation of identity of next-generation successors who provide educational tourism services is analysed. Economic recommendations for development of educational tourism in agriculture are provided.
The QATEM scientific committee worked very hard to thoroughly choose and review the papers. We hope that the reader will enjoy the selection of the fifth QATEM workshop and we are looking forward to the next workshop.