Tourism Demand In Catalonia: Detecting External Economic Factors

There is a lack of studies on tourism demand in Catalonia. To fill the gap, this paper focuses on detecting the macroeconomic factors that determine tourism demand in Catalonia. The authors also analyse the relation between these factors and tourism demand. Despite the strong seasonal component and the outliers in the time series of some countries, overnight stays give a better indication of tourism demand in Catalonia than the number of tourists. The degree of linear association between the macroeconomic variables and tourism demand is also higher when using quarterly rather than monthly data. Finally, there are notable differences between the results obtained for the different countries analysed.