Davide Provenzano

A dynamic analysis of tourism determinants in Sicily.

This study provides an initial analysis of the key determinants of tourism in Sicily. In doing so, it responds to the general lack of a scientific approach in the study and management of tourism in Sicily. By mixing a gravity approach and system dynamics methodology, the attractiveness of Sicily is examined, taking into account both structural and promotional aspects that might affect tourism demand. The results strongly suggest that the islands natural and cultural resources, the road infrastructure and the urban environment are important determinants of tourism demand in Sicily. The findings may be useful for local authorities involved in the development of tourism, and represent a starting point for further research dealing with future trends.

The "power" of tourism in Portugal

The author analyses the upper tail of the distribution of tourism supply in Portugal from 2002 to 2009, using data from the Instituto Nacional de Estatística database. Tourism supply is defined in terms of the lodging capacity of hotel establishments in about 250 tourist destinations. The paper shows that the empirical distribution of tourism supply in Portugal is heavy-tailed and consistent with a power law behaviour in its upper tail. Such behaviour seems to be stable over the years, provided that, for the time horizon covered by the data sets, the scaling parameter is always close to the value of two. The power law hypothesis is tested positively through the use of graphical and analytical methods. Cooperation among stakeholders and the enlargement of the base for tourism supply are the main policy implications drawn from the power law analysis to avoid the threat of a fall in tourist arrivals in Portugal.

Threshold Rule and Scaling Behavior in a Multi-Agent Supply Chain

In this paper an agent-based model of self organized criticality is developed in a network economy characterized by lead time and a threshold behavior of firms. Instead of considering the aggregate production of the economy as a whole, we focus on both the propagation and amplification effects of a demand shock in the sectorial productions of a multi-agent supply chain. We study a static network structure representing a relation of firms in a lower-upper stream in an industrial organization. In our model, the individual (R, nQ) policies play an important role in generating a propagation effect across the different layers of the economy, and the propagation turns into the large fluctuations and amplifications of sectorial productions.

The mobility network of European tourists: a longitudinal study and a comparison with geo-located Twitter data

Purpose This paper aims to provide a network study of the structural and dynamical characteristics of tourism flows in Europe from 1995 to 2012. Design/methodology/approach Travels in Europe were studied by following the network science research paradigm and by focusing on the whole network of intra-European tourism destinations. Network analysis was used to map and reveal the pattern of connections between states as shaped by bilateral tourism flows. Data were provided by the United Nations World Tourism Organization, and the data were integrated with tourism data available from national statistical offices of the individual countries, when necessary. Findings For 2012, results obtained from the UNWTO record-based network were compared to geo-located Twitter data as a proxy of human mobility patterns. The present analysis provides evidence of a shift towards an increased homogeneity in the travelling preferences of European tourists, an acquired attitude of visitors to travel shorter distances and a tendency of mobility patterns to merge. Finally, the comparison between UNWTO and Twitter data shows a different spatial distribution of visitors. These results provide a useful insight for policymakers involved in tourism planning. Originality/value The contribution of this study is threefold. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that focuses on the bilateral tourism flows between all countries falling, geographically or politically, under the definition of Europe. Second, evidence is provided of a shift towards a greater homogeneity in the travelling preferences of European tourists. Lastly, for the first time, this study provides a comparison between topological structure and bilateral mobility patterns of tourism flows, based on two different data-recording methods.

Contagion and Bank Runs in a Multi-Agent Financial System

In this paper we explore contagion from one institution to another that can stem from the existence of a network of financial contracts. Informational contagion, as a second possible form of systemic risk, has been also considered. The intricate web of claims and obligations linking the balance sheets of financial institutions and consumers’ behavior have been modeled in a structure that reflects the complexities of observed financial networks and the diffusion of crisis expectations. The agent based model we propose provides a suitable microeconomic framework for analyzing the relation between the structure of a financial network, i.e. the size and the pattern of obligations, and its exposure to systemic risk.

An Optimized System Dynamics Approach for a Hotel Chain Management

The proposed model consists of an integrated system dynamics-data envelopment analysis approach to value, in a dynamic framework, the effects over time of the policies implemented according to the relative efficiency analysis. Rooms’ price and competing facilities (the hedonics) are the decision variables to move in order to push the hotels towards a higher relative efficiency at the end of the observation periods. In fact, in competitive markets as tourism, hotels compete for money offering differentiated quality. Moreover, according to the microeconomic theory, a producer of differentiated goods is not a price taker but a price maker. Therefore, we assume that the decision maker of the hotel chain can freely set the rooms’ price and the hedonics that will increase the relative economic efficiency of all the hotels of the chain. The proposed model treats the rooms’ pricing and the hedonic setting problem in an environment characterized by uncertainty of the customers’ preferences. The relative efficiency analysis is carried out by making use of data envelopment analysis that identifies the peer group and targets for the inefficient units. The dynamic analysis of the effects over time of the policies implemented is carried out using system dynamics methodology. This combined approach will help the decision maker in answering the following questions: which hotels of the chain will be attractive, and which ones will be efficient? What adjustments on prices and hedonics will attract more tourism demand? What are the dynamic effects of the DEA policies? The remaining sections of this paper are organized as follows. Section 3.2 is devoted to a brief survey of the theoretical background with particular attention to data envelopment analysis and system dynamics. Section 3.3 describes our model both from the customer side and the hotel management side. Section 3.4 shows the

An integrated fuzzy-stochastic model for revenue management: The hospitality industry case.

Revenue management aims at improving the performance of an organization by selling the right product/service to the right customer at the right time. This task is very dependent on uncontrollable external factors. In the hospitality industry, rooms of the hotel represent perishable assets and fixed capacities at the same time. Therefore, in the case of a stochastic process for customers calling in reservations prior to a particular booking date, a common problem for hotels is to devise a policy for maximizing the total expected profit conditional on the set of bookings. We propose a fuzzy model for the hotel revenue management under an uncertain and vague environment. Fuzziness of objective and constraint functions have been incorporated into a stochastic booking model considering multiple-day stays to show the effect of uncertainty on the optimal demand. By changing the relaxation parameters of the objective function, we have found a set of optimal solutions with, in most of the cases, a value of the objective function equal to the optimal solution of the stochastic model, providing several alternative optimal room allocations.

An ACE Wholesale Electricity Market Framework with Bilateral Trading

In this paper, an agent-based simulation model for a hybrid power market structure is presented. A bilateral transaction mechanism is combined with a uniform-pricing auction settlement in order to isolate the impact of medium-term bilateral contracts on market power and spot prices in a competitive wholesale market setting. First we describe the negotiation method for bilateral trading of energy and then introduce a new approach for bidding in the DA market based on the load duration curve. We find that, despite the conventional concerns, the foreclosure effect produced by the bilateral agreement between a generation and a retail business will not necessarily lead to higher prices, and will be manifested only according to the specific market characteristics.

Hotel Chain Performance: A Gravity-DEA Approach

Generally speaking, competitiveness is a comparative concept of the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell and supply goods and/or services in a given market. At an operational level, instead, competitiveness is viewed in terms of the size of the market share secured by the firm, sub-sector or country considered. Moreover, in an operational context, while identifying that efficiency is a vital factor in competitive markets, it should also be acknowledged that it is, by itself, an insufficient determinant of competitiveness. Indeed, while competitiveness has more to do with “pursuing the correct strategy” towards the conservation and/or increase of the market share, operational efficiency is mainly a measure of how well the firm, sub-sector or country under study processes inputs to achieve its outputs, as compared to its maximum potential for doing so as represented by its production possibility frontier.