Tourism Demand in Catalonia: detecting external economic factors

Abstract

There is a lack of studies on tourism demand in Catalonia. To fill the gap, this paper focuses on detecting the macroeconomic factors that determine tourism demand in Catalonia. We also analyse the relation between these factors and tourism demand. Despite the strong seasonal component and the outliers in the time series of some countries, overnight stays give a better indication of tourism demand in Catalonia than the number of tourists. The degree of linear association between the macroeconomic variables and tourism demand is also higher when using quarterly rather than monthly data. Finally, there are notable differences between the results obtained for the different countries analysed. These results indicate that the best way to model tourism demand in Catalonia is to specify a quarterly model of overnight stays, differentiating between an aggregate demand model for the total number of tourists and specific models for each of the countries analysed.