Modeling tourism import: the case of OECD countries

Research on outbound tourism demand has not kept pace with the rapid development of research on inbound tourism demand. Economic and non-economic factors of tourism import in countries of origin are investigated, using static and dynamic panel data models. A period of 17 years and 35 OECD countries are included in the study. Income in the country of origin, the real effective exchange rate, trade openness, tourism export per tourist arrival, political stability of the country, persistence of habits and two dummy variables are found to be statistically significant. Inelastic tourism demand factors coefficients show a relatively low level of sensibility of outbound travelers to the changes in their home country, whether related to economic or non-economic factors. Political stability proved to be the most important variable for tourism demand abroad. The unavailability of data on social and psychological demand-related factors turned out to be a problem for longer time series in OECD countries. However, the study provides an insight into how targeted policy measures could influence outbound tourism flows.