Is outstanding performance in sport events a driver of tourism?

Capital investment in telecommunications infrastructure and tourist arrivals in developing countries: Does the public–private sectors relationship matter?

“…In addition to our main variable of interest (TELCOM), following Gholipour et al (2020), we control for other key determinants of tourist arrivals in our panel data modeling including economic development, exchange rate, and travel costs (index of air travel prices). 1 The selection of control variables in this study is based on two considerations: firstly, the relevance of the variables in panel data modeling of inbound tourism (following, inter alia , Gholipour et al, 2020; Saha et al, 2017); and secondly, the data availability for our sample of developing countries. Table 1 provides a detailed description of the utilized control variables and below we briefly explain the relationship between each control variable and inbound tourism.…”

“…It is expected that economic development improves the tourism competitiveness of destinations which in turn helps attract more foreign tourists (e.g. Gholipour et al, 2020; Saha et al, 2017). For example, the WEF’s (2019) Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report show that economies with lower levels of economic development have poor competitive conditions for travel and tourism (e.g.…”

“…The exchange rate has been identified as one of the major explanatory variables of inbound tourism in the literature. Appreciation of a host’s currency (or strengthening of the value of national currency) reduces the demand for visiting the host country as it becomes more expensive for international travelers who visit the host destination (see Gholipour et al, 2020; Saha et al, 2017). On the other hand, currency depreciation makes travels to a destination less expensive for tourists who benefit from the favorable exchange rate (Adeola and Evans, 2020).…”

“…Travel costs : It is expected that international tourist arrivals would be higher in countries with lower travel costs (e.g. Gholipour et al, 2020; Onafowora and Owoye, 2012), especially in developing nations (Ghaderi et al, 2017). In other words, increased transportation costs (as a measure of travel costs) raise the cost of tourism to the destination (Saayman and Saayman, 2008).…”

“…The reasons for employing the GMM approach are to diminish the potential problem of endogenous explanatory variables and to capture the dynamics of tourist arrivals as well (e.g. Gholipour and Foroughi, 2020; Gholipour et al, 2020).…”