Investments in Tourist Destinations for Increasing Efficiency in the Future Serbian Tourism Sector

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to find out a possible increase in efficiency on the basis of data from the previous period - which refers to investments in various elements of tourist destinations. In this studyit would be done by the evaluation of relative technical efficiency of tourism sector in 24 Serbian regions using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The evaluation will enable an analysis of how to influence the increase of tourism efficiency in the future, based on results from the recent past. On the side of output two variables were used in the DEA model: number of tourists and number of overnight stays. Furthermore, four input variables were used: annual average share of employment in accommodation and food service activities, annual average share of employment in arts, entertainment and recreation, investments in accommodation and food service activities and investments in arts, entertainment and recreation. Output oriented DEA model with variable return to scale has been solved and results show that relative efficiency score values are between 10% and 100%. Average efficiency score is 81%, which indicate that majority of Serbian regions obtained high efficiency score values. It will turn out that investments can be crucial for the development of tourism, but there are also barriers, limitations in this type of analysis. The small amount of input and output data in the survey can only yield results that need to be further verified.