Analysis of tourism trends in Spain

This paper studies the evolution of the international tourism demand for Spain in order to forecast its trends. The analysis is carried out within the framework of structural time series models that are formulated in terms of unobserved components stochastically specified. A measure of the underlying rate of growth of the international demand is derived in order to evaluate whether the sector is in a period of expansion or recession. The empirical results show that the worst period of the crisis suffered at the end of the 80s by the industry is over now and the future prospects are optimistic in the short run.