AN ECONOMETRIC ESTIMATION OF THE DEMAND FOR TOURISM: THE CASE OF SWITZERLAND

Abstract.  An understanding of the nature of demand is critical for the formulation of a tourism development program. It is also important for developed countries where tourism is an important source of export. Thus, the aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it attempts to estimate an equation of the demand for tourism in order to analyse the different variables that influence the number of nights spent in a given destination. Second, by breaking up the total number of nights according to country of origin, it studies the reaction of tourists to given economic variables according to their origin.