The Measurement of Seasonality and its Economic Impacts

Abstract

Seasonality is significant in most travel and tourism series. The economic benefits of tourism are reduced by the building of accommodation and facilities that are used only part of the year, or have low annual usage, and by seasonal unemployment. Monthly occupation peaks and troughs in 1998 are presented for 16 countries, as well as seasonal patterns of tourism by air to Israel by principal origin and of inbound and domestic hotel demand — the paper gives the national totals and the figures for Eilat (including revenue per night — inbound and domestic and employment) and for five other destinations, using the X-11 ARIMA/88 program. The Maximal Utilization constrained by Seasonality (MUS) and the Seasonal Underutilization Factor (SUF) are presented.