James Mak

The Demand For Package Tours: A Mode Choice Model

A model is presented to explain a travelers choice of vacation mode. The possible modes considered are independent travel, travel on an inclusive package tour, and travel on a basic package tour. The model is tested using logit analysis and survey data on travel to the Hawaiian Islands. The results indicate that purchasers ofpackage tours are likely to be elderly, be intent on visiting several destinations, contain few people in the party, intend to make short visits, and be first-time visitors to the destination.

Determinants of Visitor Expenditures and Visitor Lengths of Stay: A Cross-Section Analysis of U.S. Visitors to Hawaii

Available data on United States visitors to Hawaii provides highly comprehensive socio-economic profiles for visitor parties. This data was supplemented by air fares and flying times. A behavioral model was then used to analyze the determinants of actual length of stay and per capita daily expenditure of United States visitors in 1974.

Tourism and crime: Implications for regional development policy

Fujii E. T. and Mak J. (1980) Tourism and crime: implications for regional development policy, Reg. Studies 14, 27–36. This paper investigates the hypothesis that tourism generates environmental externalities in the form of increased crimes against persons and property using annual time series data over the period 1961–1975 and cross-section data for 1975 from the State of Hawaii. We find that an increase in the proportion of tourists in the population results in a significantly greater number of burglaries and rapes than a comparable increase in other population subgroups. The implications of the results for regional development planning of the visitor industry are then explored.

The Impact of 9/11 and Other Terrible Global Events on Tourism in the United States and Hawaii

This article reviews recent trends in travel and tourism in the United States and Hawaii to ascertain how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and subsequent terrible global events affected tourism flows. United States tourism has not recovered fully from 9/11 and other international shocks; indeed, recovery may be a long way off. By contrast, Hawaii tourism is enjoying robust growth in the aftermath of 9/11 as growth in tourist arrivals from the mainland has offset declines in international visitors. We suggest that Hawaii’s current tourism boom is explained in part by the diversion of United States travel from foreign travel. The article demonstrates the usefulness of vector error correction models to generate dynamic visitor forecasts, which we use to determine whether tourism in Hawaii has recovered fully from 9/11 and other terrible international events. The article considers policy options for facilitating the recovery of international tourism to the United States.

Tourism’s Forward and Backward Linkages

This article proposes linkage analysis as a complement to the traditional tourism-impact analysis to examine tourism’s economic imprints on a destination’s economy. The starting point of tourism-impact analysis is final demand; impact analysis measures the direct and indirect impacts of tourist spending on the local economy. The starting point of linkage analysis is the tourism sector; the analysis examines the strengths of the inter-sectoral forward (FL) and backward (BL) relationships between the tourism sector and the nontourism industries. The FL measures the relative importance of the tourism sector as supplier to nontourism industries in the economy, whereas the BL measures its relative importance as demander. Directly applying conventional linkage analysis to tourism is not straightforward because tourism is not a defined industry. Thus, we develop a methodology to calculate tourism’s forward and backward linkages using national, regional, or local input-output tables and demonstrate its utility by applying it to Hawaii.

Population Aging and Japanese International Travel in the 21st Century

Given Japans role as one of the worlds leading touristgenerating countries and its relatively low overseas travel propensities, travel forecasters believe that significant potential remains for increases in Japanese overseas travel. Yet, Japans demographic transition into the worlds fastest aging country could spell an end to the postwar boom in Japanese overseas travel. This article extends the research on the economic determinants of travel demand to explore the effects of demographic change. The authors, using pooled cross-section time-series data (1968-1995), show that age and cohort membership are significant determinants of Japanese international travel demand. Given reasonable assumptions about future real wage growth, labor force participation, and currency exchange rates, they demonstrate that increasing numbers of Japanese will travel abroad in the 21st century, although at a much slower pace. They also demonstrate the benefit of analyzing travel propensities for men and women separately.

Private versus Public Financing of State Destination Promotion

Until 1993 all U.S. state governments actively financed the promotion of travel to their states. In recent years, however, there has been growing public sentiment that governments should not directly engage in or fund tourism promotion. Colorado voters abolished their states tourism board in 1993, while four other states are also looking for ways to privately fund state travel promotion. This article examines whether current efforts to induce greater private funding of destination travel promotion are likely to succeed. It is suggested that a broad-based, dedicated travel industry promotion tax is an effective way to reduce free riding by travel businesses and increase private funding of destination promotion.

Forecasting tourism demand; some methodological issues.

This paper investigates methodological issues in forecasting tourism demand. We demonstrate that the employment of extended Box-Cox autoregressive tests for functional form and ridge regression to control for substantial and changing patterns of collinearity among the explanatory variables substantially increases forecast precision relative to extensively used OLS techniques.

How or How Not to Measure Visitor Expenditures

Methods of measuring visitor expenditures are discussed in this article. One approach uses a diary format, with the visitor recording expenditures as they happen. A second approach has visitors fill out an expenditure survey form just prior to departure, while a third involves surveying visitors after their return home. This article discusses the two methods used by the Hawaii Visitors Bureau (HVB) in 1974. HVBs annual survey uses a questionnaire mailed to a selected number of visitors after their return home. In 1974, HVB also conducted a special survey where visitors kept a running account of expenditures as they occurred. Results from these two surveys are compared and sources of differences identified.

The Economics of a Hotel Room Tax

In many tourist areas special taxes are placed on hotel room rentals. Such a tax has numerous proponents in Hawaii, where the tax is viewed as a potentially significant source of revenue. This study examines both the impact of a hotel room tax on visitor behavior and the potential revenue which could be generated from such a tax.