Laura Vici

Tourism and Growth in a Cross-Section of Countries

The authors provide an empirical assessment of the relationship between tourism specialization and economic growth by updating the findings of previous papers written on this issue. They use data for more than 150 countries, covering different time spans between 1980 and 2005. Contrary to previous findings (for example, Brau et al, 2004 and 2007), tourism-based countries did not grow at a higher rate than non-tourism-based countries, except for the 1980–1990 period for which, however, the data on international tourism were not fully reliable. Estimating visitor spending through the segmentation approach has several advantages in terms of policy evaluation, user management and sampling design. This approach generally relies on visitor surveys to estimate two parameters, average spending per segment and segment share, so that total visitation can be apportioned to each subgroup. Equivalently, this approach is to estimate the weighted average spending by taking into consideration the relative shares of each user segment. This paper first provides a statistical formula to compute the variance of weighted average spending by taking into account the stochastic nature of spending and segment shares. Second, simulation analysis is adopted to compare the accuracy and precision of the spending estimator based on different study designs. The results show that conducting additional short surveys to obtain information on user segments provides two advantages. First, it helps to reduce non-response bias since certain visitor groups have higher ratios of unreturned questionnaires, incomplete data or non-participation. Second, it helps to decrease the variance of the estimator so that the upper and lower bound of the confidence interval can be narrowed. The level of variance reduction will depend on the relative segment shares, the average spending, cases that are obtained, spending variation and the probability of giving full spending information across segments. The implications for survey design are offered in light of the results. This study examines the impact of the Federal Reserve (Fed) monetary policy on US hospitality stock returns. Specifically, this research paper investigates the stock performance of US hospitality firms under different Fed monetary policy regimes. Hospitality companies include gambling firms, lodging companies and restaurants. Changes in the discount rate and federal funds rate are used to measure shifts in the Fed monetary policy and to classify the full monetary policy period as either a restrictive or an expansive monetary policy environment. An expansive monetary condition is a period with a decrease in the discount or federal funds rate; a restrictive monetary environment experiences an increase in the discount or federal funds rate. Empirical test results reveal that the influence of the two monetary policy indicators on hospitality stock returns varies to a great extent. The stock returns of US restaurants are related significantly to changes in the federal funds rate. However, changes in the discount rate generally have no strong impact on US hospitality stock returns.

Assessing visitor satisfaction with tourism rejuvenation policies: the case of Rimini, Italy

This paper assesses the appeal of potential interventions on the tourism offer of Rimini, a popular Italian seaside holiday destination, by means of a choice modelling analysis. Tourism can be viewed as a composite good, its overall utility depending on the arrangement of the component characteristics. The discrete choice experiments here incorporate as attributes a number of possible changes to current tourist activities (the subject of public debate), including them in hypothetical alternative holiday packages. The conditional logit analysis indicates that tourists show lesser preference for interventions aimed at protecting the environmental integrity of the beach and greater preference for those, such as the creation of a pedestrianised seafront with late-night opening of amenities and facilities, that are likely to diminish the role of the traditional sea, sun and sand component of the overall holiday experience.

Demand distribution dynamics in creative industries: The market for books in Italy☆

We study the distribution dynamics of the demand for books in Italy. We find that for each of three broad sub-markets in which the book publishing industry can be classified − Italian novels, foreign novels and essays − sales over a three-year sample can be adequately fitted by a power law distribution. Our results can be plausibly interpreted in terms of a model of interactions among buyers exchanging information on the books they buy.

Pricing Visitor Preferences for Temporary Art Exhibitions

This paper focuses on the initiatives that museum managers may implement to maximize the profits of museums located in tourist destinations and that host temporary art exhibitions. These initiatives have direct effects on visitor demand and indirect effects on the tourist destination. Classifying visitors into residents, excursionists and tourists, the authors evaluate their preferences and willingness to pay for managerial initiatives. They focus specifically on for-profit museums that host temporary exhibitions in medium and small tourist destinations. Visitor preferences are priced through discrete choice experiments submitted to a sample of (actual and potential) visitors to Castel Sismondo Museum in Rimini, Italy.

Estimating Tourism Effects on Residents: A Choice Modelling Approach to the Case of Rimini

For tourist destinations, sustainable economic development requires, together with the attainment of economic efficiency, environmental protection and social cohesion. This latter aspect implies that the local community has to be actively involved in the planning and in the management of the tourism sector, and that (the great part of) tourism earnings have to be fairly distributed among the residents.

Eco Labels and Tourism Flows: How Much is a Blue Flag Worth?

The rise in destination accessibility and the emergence of new market segments have increased the competition among tourism destinations, both at national and international level. In order to gain a significant competitive advantage over competitors, destinations increasingly make use of signals that certify and communicate the level of quality provided. While existing research on tourism certifications mostly pertains to quality evaluation, this study exploits quantitative methods to assess the economic impact of destinations’ labels. The analysis considers one of the most popular certification of environmental quality attributed to beaches, the Blue Flag award. It explores the relationship between the certification achievement and inbound tourist flows, focusing on the Italian case study. In fact, given their aim of providing synthetized information on destinations, certification programs particularly affect foreign tourists who suffer more from asymmetric information. Panel data techniques and highly disaggregated data are employed to compare the attractiveness of certified and non-certified provinces, by controlling for several factors potentially confounding the effect of the certification.