No abstract

In the face of the world recession, this article concentrates on analyzing and forecasting demand for outbound traveling in Australia, Canada, United States, Japan, and the EU-15 countries in terms of tourism imports at constant prices and exchange rates. Drawing on an analysis of the macroeconomic effects of the global recession and its impact on tourism demand for outbound traveling, the article develops forecasts for the period from 2009 to 2010. For 2010, two scenarios are created to project demand for foreign travel. The study is rounded off by a discussion of forecast uncertainties and open questions.

This study1 concentrates on analysing and forecasting demand for international travel of the EU 15 countries in terms of tourism imports at constant prices and exchange rates. Starting out from a description of the key macroeconomic factors, it then analyses their effect on tourism demand and develops forecast models. Two scenarios are evolved to project demand for foreign travel in 2009 and 2010, and their findings are discussed. Subsequently, proposals are developed for strategies aimed to mitigate the consequences of the crisis.

This study assumes that tourists' demand reactions to income and price changes are asymmetric at different phases of the business cycle. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyzed the demand for international tourism in five source markets using a modified growth rate (MGR) model. The empirical evidence demonstrates that income elasticity is indeed asymmetric across the business cycle in four source markets. In addition, asymmetric price effects were found for one source market. To compare forecasting performance, we also estimated a time‐varying parameter (TVP) model. The results show that the MGR model generally outperforms the TVP model. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.