Vicente Ramos

Length of Stay at Multiple Destinations of Tourism Trips in Brazil

This study applied a shared heterogeneity duration model to tourists’ length of stay at different locations of multidestination trips. This analysis helps to understand tourists’ behaviors and to predict their length of stay according to relevant variables. Such information can be applied to the development of efficient marketing strategies aiming to push the average length of stay to the desired direction, and to develop “on the fly” service provision and revenue management strategies. The focus on multiple destination trips offers an innovative analytical perspective. A large data set of 309,000 visits to Brazilian destinations was analyzed. Several empirical findings regarding determinants of tourists’ length of stay were obtained. Positively skewed distributions for duration and hazard functions were found to best fit observed data. Shared heterogeneity was found to statistically improve the explanatory capacity of duration models when multidestination tourism trips data are analyzed.

The role of training in changing an economy specialising in tourism

This paper compares the training requirements of alternative tourism development strategies which are differentiated by the quality of service offered. The paper focuses on the Balearic Islands and use an original database that consists of a representative sample of Balearic hotels. This database includes data on both employers and employees and allows us to identify differences in job characteristics, as well as differences in human capital, with respect to both education and on‐the‐job training, depending on the category of the hotel. The article uses a discrete choice model to identify the characteristics of both employer and employee that determine the provision of training. It concludes that educational level is not a strong constraint on the mobility of workers between categories, and we show that on‐the‐job training has a role to play in the transition to alternative tourism development strategies.

Change in the managerial efficiency and management technology of hotels: an application to Thailand

This article estimates the change in managerial efficiency and management technology of a sample of hotels in Chiang Mai, Thailand, during 2002–2006. The study applies the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology proposed by Banker et al (1984) to examine managerial efficiency in 2002 and 2006. The Malmquist productivity approach developed by Färe et al (1992) is employed to evaluate the change in managerial efficiency and management technology over the same period. The results show that medium-sized and small hotels tend to be more managerially efficient than large hotels. The total factor productivity declined slightly owing to a lack of investment in management technology. Instead, the hotels in the sample concentrated on improving managerial effort. This shortfall in technology investment could hamper productivity in the longer term.

The potential effects of a change in the distribution of tourism expenditure on employment

Many mature tourist destinations are considering replacing low category hotel beds with high category beds. This study estimates the potential effects that these proposals will have on employment, assuming that labour is homogeneous. The methodology used is based on the input–output model and the social accounting matrix, which allow direct, indirect and induced effects to be taken into account. In addition to conventional employment and output multipliers, the paper presents projections for different bed replacement scenarios and analyses the replacement ratios which would allow aggregate gross value added or employment to remain constant. Finally, the analysis extends to include the change of tourist expenditure distribution on complementary tourism facilities.

A risk map of international tourist regions in Spain

This paper presents a different approach to tourism research at the regional level. Financial econometric techniques are applied to international tourist arrivals, as well as their volatilities, in the five main tourist regions in Spain, using monthly international tourist arrivals during 1997-2007. Univariate time series models are estimated for the conditional means of monthly international tourist arrivals and their volatilities. The estimated conditional volatility models are GARCH(1,1), GJR(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1). Both the second moment and log-moment conditions are calculated to provide diagnostic checks of the estimated models. The conditional mean estimates are generally statistically adequate, and the inferences are valid.

Implications of Human Capital Analysis in Tourism

Importance of the issue Even though Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations had already pointed out the importance of human capital as an explanatory factor of growth, there is no doubt that in the last forty years the economic theory has improved outstandingly its understanding of the role of human capital in economic development. From the first studies of Shultz (1960, 1961), an important part of the economic growth literature has focused on the effects of human capital on productivity. Starting with Solow (1957), an important part of the research dealing with growth accounting has tried to explain the determinants of growth apart from raw labour and capital accumulation. In some of the main papers on the issue (Griliches 1970, 1977; Kendrick 1976, 1994), human capital has been identified as one of the explanatory elements of the Solow residual ‘black box’. From a theoretical perspective, the proposal of Lucas (1988) has turned into a benchmark in the modelisation of human capital accumulation as the driving force of economic development. In fact, many of the new theories of growth are based on the existence of externalities in education (Topel 1998). From the microeconomic perspective, Gary Becker is considered to be the father of the contemporary human capital economic literature. The goal of these studies is the analysis of individual, family and social investment decisions in human capital and their policy implications. The topics under consideration are, among others, the relationship between individual demand for education and the supply of educated labour, the variance in earnings that can be explained through differences in the components of human capital endowments as education, on-the-job training, experience, migration or health, and the connection between them and labour productivity. During the last decades, an important increase in the average level of human capital has taken place in all developed economies. This has put the analysis of human capital issues at the forefront of labour studies. As

Thailand's long-run tourism demand elasticities.

This paper estimates Thailands long-run tourism demand elasticities for a set of origin countries by applying dynamic ordinary least squares. A detailed analysis of the potential competing destinations for each origin country is performed to ensure a precise coefficient for the substituting elasticity. A long-run static model of time varying parameter is then used to analyse the effects on the estimation of a potential structural change caused by the 1997 economic crisis and the subsequent change in exchange rate policy. The results show that there are different demand elasticities for each origin market and that own price elasticity is lower than substituting price elasticity for most origin countries. These findings indicate that price-setting strategies should be specific for each origin market and that information about prices in competing destinations needs to be considered. Moreover, the results show that there was a structural change in 1997 that severely affected the estimation.

Modelling Air Passenger Arrivals in the Balearic and Canary Islands, Spain:

This paper models daily air passenger arrivals and their volatility for the Balearic and Canary Islands, Spain. Due to climatic conditions, tourism seasonality is clear in the Balearics, with an increasing number of arrivals during the winter months. In the Canary Islands, the seasonal pattern is different, with decreasing numbers in recent years. Three univariate conditional volatility models are estimated for both the Balearics and the Canaries, concentrating on empirical issues relating to short- and long-run persistence, as well as the symmetric and asymmetric effects of positive and negative shocks of equal magnitude on volatility.

An empirical study of inbound tourism demand in China: a copula-GARCH approach

ABSTRACT This paper proposes new models for analyzing the volatility and dependence of monthly tourist arrivals to China applying a copula-GARCH approach. A desegregation of the top six origins of China inbound tourists from the period January 1994 to December 2013 is used in this study. The empirical results show that there is a strong seasonal effect in all cases and some habit persistence on monthly tourist arrival growth rate for South Korea, Russia, the United States (US), and Malaysia. Second, the volatilities of arrival growth rates to China are impacted significantly by their own short- and long-run effects, except for Russia and South Korea. Only short-run shock affects Russian arrivals while only long-run shocks are affecting South Korea arrivals. Third, the conditional dependence among different source countries is found to be positive and significant, but the conditional dependence for all considered pairs is low. Moreover, there is extreme co-movement (tail dependence) between the six major tourism source countries, suggesting the pairwise of international tourist arrivals shows a related increasing or decreasing pattern during extreme events. Implications are discussed and recommendations provided.

ASEAN’s intra-regional tourism demand to Thailand

ABSTRACT This paper presents an overview of intra-regional tourism in ASEAN at the beginning of the challenging times that will come with the constitution of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Thailand is chosen as the destination country and the other nine countries are selected as origin. After presenting ASEAN’s intra-regional tourism, the study develops a model of long-run demand. The coefficients are estimated by a time-varying parameters method considering the potential presence of structural breaks, and its implication. The results present and discuss the implications of income, own price, and cross price elasticities. As concluding recommendations, this study suggests that while the region should take advantage of the expansion of the Asian markets due to economic growth and liberalization of ASEAN since 2016, it should use different policies in each origin market.