Persistence Change in Tourism Data

The authors apply recently proposed persistence change tests to inbound tourism series in order to evaluate whether their properties have changed over time. By using quarterly series of the number of overnight stays in hotel accommodation and similar establishments in the Algarve, from 1987:01 to 2008:03, they gathered evidence of persistence change in all series. In particular, a change from I(1) to I(0) was detected for some countries, while for others the direction change was not clear-cut. These results have implications from a policy perspective and shed light on the generally accepted conviction that policy decision processes should not ignore the fact that, in general, tourism inbound series display mean reverting behaviour, being only temporarily affected by external shocks.