Modelling tourism competitiveness in small Pacific island countries

Abstract

This study models overall and bilateral tourism competitiveness in small Pacific island countries (PICs), namely, Cook Islands, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu. The pooled mean group approach, which corrects for cross-sectional dependence and non-stationarity, is used for estimation with quarterly data from 2002 to 2019. The findings indicate that for Fiji and Vanuatu, other PICs are competing destinations and that Fiji and Vanuatu face the strongest bilateral competition amongst the selected PICs. Cross-price elasticities are insignificant for Tonga and are generally negative for the Cook Islands and Samoa. Thus, while for Fiji and Vanuatu, the Cook Islands is a competing destination, Fiji and Vanuatu are complementary destinations for the Cook Islands. Therefore, destinations that more closely resemble each other face stronger competition, and the nature and strength of competitive behaviour between two destinations are different for each concerned destination.

Modelling the asymmetric productivity effects of tourism demand

“…To test for unit roots, we first consider cross-sectional dependence within the data series (Kumar et al, 2022c). We rely on the Pesaran CD test to determine the presence of cross-sectional dependence.…”

International tourism and economic growth: Empirical evidence from Kerala

“…India is a diverse country where its diversity can be found within and across its 29 states in terms of the diversity among the people living there, languages they speak, foods they eat, customs, traditions, and culture they follow. The differences in its geography, natural beauty, lengthy coastal areas, hill stations, forest and wildlife, world‐famous historical and religious places, heritage sites, and monuments, and so forth, make India a world‐famous tourist destination and thereby attracts a large number of tourists every year (Kumar & Singh, 2019; Pradeep et al, 2017). Being a service sector‐led economy, the contribution of the tourism sector to economic growth and development in India has gained a faster momentum during the past decades and has the potential to be a major contributor in the recent future.…”