Manuela Pulina

Inbound tourism and long-run economic growth

There is an upsurge of literature investigating the relationship between inbound tourism expansion and economic growth with special emphasis on developing countries. Some countries – such as Spain and Italy – can be taken as examples of demonstrating such a successful trajectory. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the evolution of the Spanish and Italian economies and their respective tourism sectors from the 1950s and 1960s, respectively. This research is theoretically based on the literature on demand-based growth and the methodology adopted is that of the integration, cointegration and multivariate Granger causality tests. The results show the influencing role of inbound tourism for both economies.

Estimation of outbound Italian tourism demand: a monthly dynamic EC-LAIDS model

An almost ideal demand system with monthly frequency, in both long-run and dynamic forms, is used to quantify the responsiveness of Italian tourism demand to changes in relative prices, exchange rates, expenditure and unexpected one-off events in four main European destinations. Short-term elasticities, which are crucial for policies regarding own price, as well as cross prices and expenditure elasticities are derived from the dynamic model. It is also found that the dynamic model outperforms the long-run model in forecasting accuracy. This paper provides useful information for policymakers to maintain high market shares of Italian tourism demand.

A Further Step into the ELGH and TLGH for Spain and Italy

Nowadays many developing countries focus on economic policies for promoting international tourism and exports expansion as a potential source of economic growth of the country. However, the understanding of the relationship between exports and economic growth is still ongoing. When treating the relationship between tourism and economic growth, considering tourism as a non-traditional export few studies have been published to date. This paper has the objective to assess if exports and tourism have really promoted growth by means of the export-led growth hypothesis (ELGH) and the tourism-led growth hypothesis (TLGH). The cases under analysis are Spain and Italy, two of the most important countries worldwide regarding the expansion of tourism. Cointegration techniques and the multivariate Granger causality test are applied. Results reveal that exports cause economic growth in the long-term for both countries, whilst only for Spain tourism appears as a factor which influences economic growth in the long-run.

Understanding Urban Tourism Attractiveness The Case of the Archaeological Ötzi Museum in Bolzano

The purpose of this investigation is to analyze to what extent a museum may be regarded as a potential driver for urban tourism. Via a travel cost model, the likelihood to revisit South Tyrol’s Museum of Archaeology (the Ötzi museum), in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Italy), is estimated and the factors that influence visitors’ experience, motivations, and their intention to revisit the museum are analyzed. To this aim, the number of actual visits to the museum is used as an economic indicator of museum attractiveness. The findings show that the museum has an important educative role in addition to being an economic earner for the city. Nevertheless, entrance fees discourage repeat visit, particularly for those on a low income. The findings also provide a tool to manage urban heritage resources and plan future urban developments around the Ötzi museum.

Exploring the dynamics of the efficiency in the Italian hospitality sector. A regional case study

Highlights? A dynamical tool to describe the performance of economic efficiency is introduced. ? Static DEA, clustering and metric distances are the ingredients of the methodology. ? Case study is used to demonstrate the validity of the methodology. ? Policy and management implications for the Italian hospitality sector are presented. This paper introduces a methodology to describe and compare the economic relative performance of the hospitality sector of the Italian regions during the period 2000-2004. Dynamics of the hospitality sector of each region is represented by the evolution of its economic efficiency. The investigation involves the following steps: a static Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate the pure economic efficiency; two different notions of distances between time series and hierarchical clustering techniques are used to classify the economies in the sample. By using a correlation-based distance, three main clusters are detected, while two clusters are identified when the average distance is used. The trend patterns, identified by employing the correlation distance, can be interpreted in terms of exogenous factors that influence the economic efficiency of the group of regions, causing shocks picked up by the high volatility as well as structural breaks. By employing the average distance, one infers information on the cluster that have had similar efficiency values over the period under analysis. This efficiency can be also interpreted in terms of a particular type of hospitality management as well as the firm structure. Following the analysis, some policy and management implications are presented.

Understanding museum visitors’ experience: a comparative study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine museum visitors’ experience. The objective of the research is to explore preferences, behaviour, overall. This study experience and the determinants on repeated visits to two heritage sites. In particular, a more comprehensive regression approach is introduced and employed to compare results at two regional museums. Design/methodology/approach – First, a factor analysis identifies a set of orthogonal factors related to visitors’ perceptions on their positive and negative experiences at two different museums. Second, a two-step cluster analysis is implemented to identify specific demand segments. Third, a regression analysis reveals the key determinants that influence visitors’ perceptions on the quality of services provided at the cultural sites. The empirical data were collected at two archaeological museums located in Sardinia and Trentino Alto Adige (Italy). Findings – On the whole, some homogeneous findings have been obtained for the two cultural sites...

Investigating economic efficiency in Italy: a regional comparison

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the hospitality sector using the island of Sardinia and the autonomous province of Bolzano as a case study. The comparison holds its own interest since they are both tourism destinations, though characterised by different features as far as seasonality is concerned. Employing a large sample set, pure technical and scale efficiency are computed using a panel data envelopment analysis. Overall, the empirical findings reveal that the hospitality sector in Sardinia and in Bolzano can be regarded as economically inefficient and mostly depicting decreasing returns to scale. Nevertheless, some distinctive features are detected amongst firms classified by size. Policy implications are drawn to help economic agents to improve their efficiency scores, thus leading to an optimal revenue management strategy.

Analysing the factors influencing visitors’ satisfaction at a museum: the role of socio-demographic characteristics, motivations and visit experience

In recent years museums have become interested in significant modernization efforts within their administration by updating their managerial elements and principles. Consumers’ satisfaction in particular has been recognized as a key element in gaining an advantage over competitors. The objective of this paper is to use a representative sample of visitors to the G.A. Sanna National Museum of Archaeology in Sardinia, Italy, to identify the main determinants influencing their satisfaction. A probabilistic quantitative model is employed based on microeconomic foundations. The findings support the hypothesis that motivations, the actual experience at the museum and the length of the visit, as well as socio-demographic factors such as nationality, gender and education influence the overall level of satisfaction. This paper contributes to the literature on consumer satisfaction in museums and provides useful directions for museum management to explore.

Impact of Changes in Consumer Preferences on Sectoral Labour Reallocation: Evidence from the Italian Economy

This study empirically investigates the impact of changes in consumer preferences on labour reallocation across the Italian economic sectors. For this purpose, coherent sectoral time series of consumer preferences and labour units are constructed from Italian national accounts and consumption expenditure data. In line with recent firm-level evidence, empirical findings indicate a positive and significant effect of preference changes on labour reallocation. Results are robust to several econometric specifications, different procedures to elicit preference changes, as well as the introduction of time-varying price coefficient and sector-specific effects of total consumption expenditure.

A Classification and Regression Tree (CART) to Analyse Cruisers’ Expenditure Pattern and Perception in a Port of Call

This study analyses cruise visitors’ perceptions in a port-of-call. The empirical data were collected via a survey in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) during 2009. A high quality and an original database was obtained for such a niche of economy activity. The novelty of this paper consists of a few methodological enhancements. First, a hierarchical cluster analysis, based on the results of a correspondence analysis and two stopping rules, has robustly demonstrated the existence of six different clusters. Second, a CART is used to identify which variables are better predictors to classify individuals in the different clusters. The empirical findings imply several policy directions for each of the clusters. Specifically, institutions intervention should enhance security in Cartagena to guarantee inland repeated visits; an ad hoc marketing policy may encourage revisit by young South American customers; destination managers should extend the inland visiting time that is likely to produce local multiplier effects.