THE DETERMINANTS OF INTERNATIONAL TOURISM DEMAD FOR TURKEY: A PANEL DATA APPROACH

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the international tourism demand to Turkey. For this purpose, the tourism demand from selected 24 OECD countries to Turkey is estimated by using panel data approach for the period of 1990-2010 and 1990-2008. The tourist arrival from each selected OECD country is used for dependent variable, and income level and relative price level are used for the explanatory variables in order to explain the tourism demand. Moreover, the price variables of Greece, Spain and Portugal are added to measure the substitution effect. At the same time, dummy variable is used to investigate the effect of the Marmara earthquake for 1999. The empirical results show that income variable is a significant variable explaining international tourism demand to Turkey from OECD countries. Also, as the level of income increases, tourism demand increases. Relative price variable is negative even though it is expected positive. The substitution effect of Portugal is positive and high while the substitution effect of Greece is negative. At the same time the substitution effect of Spain is statistically insignificant.