The paper estimates the impact of macroeconomic supply- and demand-side determinants of tourism, one of the largest components of services exports globally, and the backbone of many smaller economies. It applies the gravity model to a large dataset comprising the full universe of bilateral tourism flows spanning over a decade. The results show that the gravity model explains tourism flows better than goods trade for equivalent specifications. The elasticity of tourism with respect to GDP of the origin (importing) country is lower than for goods trade. Tourism flows respond strongly to changes in the destination country’s real exchange rate, along both extensive (tourist arrivals) and intensive (duration of stay) margins. OECD countries generally exhibit higher elasticties with respect to economic variables (GDPs of the two economies, real exchange rate, bilateral trade) due to the larger share of business travel. Tourism to small islands is less sensitive to changes in the country’s real exchange rate, but more susceptible to the introduction/removal of direct flights.

This new book for international tourism students analyses the characteristics of the international tourism market and the tourism development policies pursued by industrialised and developing countries. International Tourism applies theories of international trade to the international tourism sector, and analyses the fundamental aspects of international tourism demand and supply, focusing on a number of fascinating developments. The book also includes statistics, market trends and forecasts. It has a great number of international cases and should be a useful tool for any student of tourism.

This book examines the drivers of inbound medical tourism in Germany. In light of growing international trade of medical services, it provides a quantitative analysis of the determinants of international patients’ choice of destination. It develops coherent definitions of medical tourism and medical travel, and presents multiple unique data sets to identify inbound medical travelers in Germany. Further, it introduces an empirical modeling framework for investigating and quantifying the drivers and effects of a patient's choice of destination at the national, hospital and individual level. A particular focus of the analysis lies on cultural proximity and personal networks as key channels to convey trust in a destination’s service. In addition, real consideration sets of international patients are presented. The findings presented are embedded in a global context and will help inform future empirical investigations and modeling.

This paper examines the key determinants of international tourism. The study tests the hypothesis that international tourism is positively related to expenditures on its promotion. International tourism is important to countries as it has a huge economic impact. As many new destinations have emerged with economic growth, international tourism market is becoming more and more competitive. In such a situation, policy makers need to know the key determinants of international tourism in order to promote inbound tourism effectively. Many past studies have shown that economic variables such as price, income, exchange rates are important factors. However, since these macroeconomic variables are not controlled by tourism policy planners, past models did not provide much direct policy guidance for them. Thus, in order to provide further policy implications, this study analyzes the influence of government expenditure and non-economic factors on tourism. The data are from the UNWTO (the number of international tourist, budget of National Tourism Organizations, the number of hotel rooms), the World Bank (relative price level, real GDP per capita), and the UNESCO (the number of World Heritage cultural and natural sites). The results suggest that there is a highly statistically significant positive relationship between international tourism and expenditures on its promotion. The budget of NTO appears to increase both the absolute number of inbound tourists and market share of the country, and it is cost-effective. It is therefore recommended for national governments to allocate larger amount of budget to tourism related programs including marketing activities. Another finding is that there is a strong positive relationship between the number of the World Heritage cultural sites and international tourism. From this result, it seems that marketing activities will be more effective when they feature cultural resources including World Heritage sites. At the same time, it can be said that governments should consider the effective management and preservation of cultural resources to maintain sustainable tourism promotion. In addition, there is a strong positive relationship between the number of hotel rooms and international tourism. This result not only shows that the capacity of accommodations is important in tourism promotion, but also suggests that the role of private sector is essential to promote international tourism. Thus, close cooperation between governments and tourism industries is recommended.

In recent years there has been a considerable interest in the cultural aspects of tourism such as the impacts of culture on tourism planning, development, management, and marketing. However, the focus has been on material forms of culture such as arts, music, or crafts. The impacts of national culture on tourist behavior and travel decision-making have not been paid much attention. Only in the last two years have cross-cultural issues begun to generate significant interest among academics. An examination of cultural characteristics and differences is extremely important to the tourism industry because today’s tourism environment is becoming increasingly international. Information on the nature of the cultural differences between international tourists and locals is not readily available in tourism literature. The concept of culture is very complex and includes such abstract concepts as satisfaction, attitude and loyalty. International Tourism brings these concepts to the undergraduate student in tourism, as well as students in the related fields of marketing, management, international business, and cross-cultural communication. Designed as a textbook, it isorganized and presented in an integrated and relevant way for the benefit of a worldwide audience.