WHAT DOES DYNAMICS OF TOURISM MARKETING SHOW IN 12 DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?

Manuel A Vanegas

doi:10.20473/jde.v6i2.24718

Abstract

This study is motivated by the idea to what extent tourism marketing investment contributes to tourism demand expansion. It searches for better estimation methods that can deal with the inter-temporal and cross-section correlation of the disturbances. The effect of omitting the tourism marketing variable, as evidenced by the drastic change in long and short-run elasticity values for all tourism demand models, has emerged clearly. There is a need for the national tourism institutions to have a clear, consistent, and sustained investment policy in tourism marketing activities with respect to enhanced effectiveness in allocating financial resources.Keywords: Tourism Marketing, 12 Developing Countries, Dynamic Panel, Elasticity Values, Omission of Tourism Marketing Variable.JEL: Z33, C23,O50

Highlights

Over the last seven decades, the tourism sector panorama shows a tendency to increase tourism development activity in both tourist arrivals and receipts
The results revealed that marketing spending positively affects tourist arrivals with elasticity values ranging from nearly 0.28 to nearly 0.45
The long-run results suggest that a 1% increase in tourism marketing investment would results in nearly: 0.76%, 1%, 0.94%, and 0.84% increase in tourist arrivals to East Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America from their tourism origin markets, respectively, ceteris paribus

Summary

Introduction

Over the last seven decades, the tourism sector panorama shows a tendency to increase tourism development activity in both tourist arrivals and receipts. Despite the economic crisis in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s, the current economic slowdown, political turmoil, and health concerns related to the recent coronavirus 19 outbreak tourism sector has seen continued expansion in tourism development. Based on preliminary data reported by tourism destinations around the world to the United Nations World Tourism Organization-UNWTO, tourist arrivals stand at nearly 1.5 billion, with an average annual growth rate of almost 5%, in 2019 (UNWTO, 2020). For nearly ten years in a row, tourism receipts have increased faster than merchandise exports worldwide, improving the balance of payments position, enhancing economic growth, and helping to reduce poverty in many developing countries (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development-UNCTAD, 2008, 2017; UNWTO, 2015; World Travel and Tourism Council-WTTC, 2020)

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion