Winter tourism dependence: A cyclical and cointegration analysis. Case study for the Alps

Abstract

This work studies the evolution of winter tourism in the main European ski resorts in recent years, exploring the degree of dependency it presents on the gross domestic product gaps of those European countries with the main registered incoming tourists attending to these ski resorts. This study consists of two parts: first, a cyclical behavior analysis of the evolution of winter tourism demand in these regions and its level of external dependence. This is achieved by the application of decomposition techniques of the economic cycle to verify the influence of these variables on the degree of cyclical fluctuation of winter tourism. For the second half, cointegration techniques are applied to test the linear or nonlinear combinations of these variables. This dual analysis allows a wider perspective, considering short- and long-term fluctuations, when analyzing co-movements and dependence of the demand of tourism-based destinations with a proxy variable for the income.