Determinantes da procura turística doméstica em Portugal numa conjuntura de crise económica e financeira Determinants of Portuguese domestic tourism demand at a time of economic and financial crisis

In 2007 a financial crisis began with a strong impact on the European economy, and particularly in Portugal, with tough consequences also in the tourism sector. The available data show that, despite the weight of domestic tourism in the tourism sector in Portugal is not as great as that of international tourism, its importance is considerable, and presented a slight increasing trend in the last decade. However in 2011 and 2012 there was an inverse trend. Research conducted in Portugal has focused mainly on international tourism demand; domestic tourism demand has had little published research. In an environment of economic and financial crisis, it is important to study the factors which define this tourist demand. The objective of this study is to model and produce forecasts for domestic tourism demand in Portugal. Quarterly data were used from 2009 to 2012, for an extended number of economic variables, such as GDP per capita, the average available income of households, the index of consumer prices, the consumer confidence indicator, the unemployment rate, the number of unemployed and the price of oil. We also considered a binary variable indicating the presence of the Troika in Portugal. Various specifications of econometric models taking as dependent variable the number of nights spent by resident tourists in Portugal were estimated. Fo recasts of tourism demand were produced using the traditional exponential smoothing models. The results indicate that in Portugal, in a context of economic and financial crisis, the domestic tourism demand is explained by the average available income of households, the number of unemployed and the index of consumer prices on transport. The estimates indicate that the income elasticity on demand is approximately +2.1%, the number of unemployed is about -0.6% and the price index of transport is approximately 1.2%.