A country-of-origin analysis of tourist expenditure: the case of Turkey

Abstract

While there is large literature on tourist flows and expenditure shares among several destinations, the quantitative analysis of tourist expenditure in a single country is less well-developed. The first objective of this paper is to isolate characteristics which explain the levels of overall tourist expenditure based on the different originating countries. The second objective is to develop a quantitative method of optimizing the use of a government tourism promotional budget using outlier analysis. Using a comprehensive dataset obtained from the Tourism Board of the Government of Turkey, we find that the most consistently significant determinant of expenditure is the percentage of business travellers. The strongest positive outlier appears to be Switzerland, followed by Japan, Spain and Saudi Arabia. This should provide some indication of the most promising target markets for the Turkish Tourist Board.