Abstract
Introduction
In the increasing pace of globalization, tourism has emerged as one of the fastest growing and evolving sectors globally (Set et al., 2017). According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, an estimated 1.5 billion international arrivals were recorded in 2019. Despite this, international tourist arrivals is projected to fall by 60–80% in 2020 (UNWTO, 2020). In light of the measures implemented by various governments around the world to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the associated economic and social impacts have meant that the future of tourism appears uncertain globally. This uncertainty, resulting from the intensification of tourist behaviours and changing institutional conditions across countries, has renewed the importance of understanding the drivers of tourism demand for developing effective strategies for meeting these challenges. Understanding the factors influencing tourism demand is critical for implementing effective tourism and hospitality-related policies to achieve efficiency in the tourism and hospitality industry globally. In the ever-changing global economy, characterized by increasing interconnectedness of people and places, the widespread global shocks have made the understanding of these changes even more critical. These changes have led to advances in the theoretical and empirical analysis of tourism demand research (see Dogru et al., 2017, 2019; Gunter et al., 2019).
The special issue
The ever-changing tourism sector led to the proposed special issue Tourism Demand: Emerging Theoretical and Empirical Issues. After some concerted effort by the guest editors, reviewers and authors, we are happy that these determinations have resulted in seven full research papers.
Concerning the changing dynamics in tourist arrivals and expenditure, there has been renewed interest in examining the indicators used as measures of tourism demand. While the use of tourist arrivals has been featured prominently in tourism demand studies, and some instances have decomposed them into holiday tourist and business tourist arrivals, some studies have used tourist expenditure as a measure of tourism demand. The choice of the variable to capture tourism demand depends mainly on the availability of data in the geographical focus of the study. Rosselló-Nadal and He examine how the choice of the variable used to measure tourism demand influences estimates of elasticity. This topic is relevant because it provides a theoretical relation between tourist arrivals and tourist expenditure for modelling tourism demand. The authors use international tourist arrivals and tourist expenditures for 191 countries from 1998 to 2016 and provide new empirical evidence to indicate that the choice of the variable used to measure and estimate tourism demand does matter.
Several studies have examined the determinants of tourism demand. Much of these studies have focused on the use of different econometric techniques, thus mostly quantitative and to a lesser extent qualitative. These studies have used time-series and panel data analytical frameworks for establishing the relationship between tourism demand and its key drivers from the existing literature. Given the growing importance of Turkey as a tourist destination, Ulucak, Yücel and Ilkay model the dynamics of demand of tourists from Turkey’s top 25 originating countries for the period from 1998 to 2017. By incorporating critical drivers of tourism demand, Ulucak et al., 2020 find that a gravity model is a useful tool for modelling tourism demand and show that the exchange rate and globalization are impacting positively on tourism demand. Ulucak, Yücel and Ilkay find that political uncertainty, inflation, household debt and distance to Turkey from the origin country of tourists impact negatively on tourist demand. Provenzano develops a complex network analysis and gravity model to empirically investigate the migration–tourism nexus of the EU-28, focusing on bilateral relations between the EU member states. Provenzano finds that the structure of the tourism and migration networks are similar and that there exists an inverse causal relationship between migration and tourist movements within the EU. However, no indirect causal relationship is found between migration and tourism in the EU. Another gap in the existing literature is modelling tourism demand for specific tourism activities, such as hiking, kayaking and biking. The paper by Oh, Kim and Choi does not only attempt to fill this gap in the context of tourism demand for hiking, but it also utilizes a novel empirical approach when modelling hiking tourism demand.
In recent times, there has been growing theoretical and empirical evidence of the importance of institutional quality of the origin and host countries of tourists in influencing tourist demand. The quality of institutions in tourists’ origin and host countries is likely to affect the quality of tourist experience and thereby impacting on tourism demand. On the one hand, a country with robust institutional quality mechanisms is expected to attract more international tourists. This is because a high quality institution may signal a high level of security and thus pave the way for increased tourist arrivals. Further, institutional quality does influence entrepreneurial behaviour and therefore has a positive impact on tourism. On the other hand, countries with weak institutional quality mechanisms are likely to serve as a barrier to tourism, which could result in a decrease in tourist arrivals.
Despite the importance of institutional quality in influencing tourism demand, most tourism demand studies have neglected the role of institutions in modelling tourism demand. Bulut, Kocak and Suess examine how economic freedom, as measured by political rights and civil liberties, impacts on tourist arrivals in top tourist destinations in 2016. This included France, the United States, Spain, China, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany and Mexico. The authors conclude that the level of freedom positively influences tourist arrivals. Economic policy uncertainty can have a significant impact on a government’s ability to deal with internal and external shocks. While an economy may deteriorate in times of uncertainty, the extent to which it impacts on tourism demand remains complex. Işik, Sirakaya-Türk and Ongan examine the efficacy of economic policy uncertainty on tourism demand in North America. Işık et al., 2019 find that the economic policy uncertainty is perceived differently by tourists from North American countries, with this impact being more pronounced among Canadian tourists compared to Mexican tourists. Nguyen, Schinckus and Su examine the effect of a rise in global economic policy uncertainty on international tourist arrivals and expenditures. Nguyen et al., 2020 observe that the impact of global economic policy uncertainty differs across income groups, namely, the high-, upper-middle-, lower-middle- and low-income countries. They also find that while an increase in global economic policy uncertainty leads to a higher demand for tourist departures in low-income- and lower middle-income countries, it tends to result in decreased tourist departures in upper-middle and high-income countries, and they attribute this to the migration effect whereby tourists migrate in search for better job opportunities in rich countries.
Concluding remarks
In the ever-changing global economy, characterized by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the role and impact of tourism on the global economy remain uncertain. Governments in both developed and developing countries are taking steps to ensure sustained growth in the tourism sector because of the vital role it plays in economic systems. We hope that this special issue will provide the basis for further critical analysis of tourism demand and its role in the global economy. While the tourism industry has experienced many global and regional crises, the industry has not gone through a pandemic crisis in modern history. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has caught the tourism industry off guard. Although the studies in this special issue do not cover the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe that future research can draw on the findings here to critically assess the impact of external shocks on global and local tourism demand. While we believe that the tourism industry will recover, further research is needed to develop strategies to minimize the adverse impacts of such pandemics that may emerge in the future.
We, the guest editors, wish to express our sincere thanks to the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Albert Assaf, and the Editor, Professor Raffaele Scuderi, for the support and patience in the process, thus ensuring that this special issue comes to fruition. We wish to also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable contributions in the review process. Finally, we appreciate the authors for their patience and determination in revising and improving their work in line with the guest editors’ comments on their manuscripts.