Abstract:

Turkey is one of the main tourist destinations that attracts attention with its historical and cultural textures, which is on the Mediterranean coast. Thanks to foreign tourists, the tourism sector is in the top of the sectors that provide foreign exchange returns to the Turkish economy. The aim of this study is to reveal the factors that determine the international tourism demand of Turkey. For this purpose, the data of 24 countries sending tourists to Turkey for the years 2010-2017 have been used. The number of foreign tourists arriving in the country representing the international tourism demand has been used. In the model, dynamic panel data analysis has been applied as the changing structure of tourist preferences is taken into account. Thanks to the adding of the delayed value of the dependent variable as an explanatory variable to the model, tourists can measure their loyalty and advice. The previous period of tourism demand, per person income, supply capacity and political stability in Turkey have a positive impact on tourism demand; the relative price, terror events and the 2016 coup attempt have a negative impact on tourism demand; the relative exchange rate has no impact on tourism demand.

Abstract:

Turkey, located on the Mediterranean coast, is one of the most important tourism destinations, attracting attention with its historical and cultural texture. Owing to the foreign tourists, the tourism sector is one of the leading sectors that provide foreign exchange rate income to the Turkish economy. The aim of this study is to reveal the factors that determine Turkey’s international tourism demand. For this purpose, the data of 24 countries which send tourists to Turkey for the 2010-2017 periods has been used. The number of arriving foreign visitors was used as the proxy of international tourism demand. Dynamic panel data analysis was applied because of the changing structure of tourist preferences. By using the lagged dependent variable as an explanatory variable, tourists’ loyalty and the word-of-mouth effect on tourism demand can be measured. It was determined that previous demand, income per capita, accommodation supply and the political stability of Turkey positively affect the tourism demand while relative prices, terrorist incidents and the coup attempt in 2016 negatively affect the tourism demand. Finally, it is revealed that bilateral exchange rates have no effect on tourism demand.

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