Current Projects
East Midlands Tourism - Tourism Marketing Evaluation
The project involves evaluating the impact of EMT-funded marketing activities through the 'conversion' method. This estimates the proportion of people who were influenced to take a trip to the destination as a direct result of the marketing information they requested/sought. The main focus of the research is threefold:
First, to determine the"conversion rate" of those persons contacting the Destination Management Partner enquiring about short breaks to the destination. Second, the return on investment of the marketing campaign is evaluated as well as the incremental spend. Third, the studies provide information on the behaviour, preferences, expenditure, length of stay, party size etc., of the persons travelling or intending to travel to the destination.
AGA - Health Risk Travel Indicators
This project involved the collation of data of both environmental variables and health data for the top 20 European destinations visited by UK residents. The data is categorised under three broad categories:
Top 20 declared medical conditions; top 20 European destinations visited by UK residents and relevant statistics impacting health while on vacation.
This data is then mapped against specific ailments to enable a medical professional to comment on the 'risk'/ impact such condition would have on their illness.
OTE
The Christel DeHaan Tourism and Travel Research Institute (TTRI) has signed an agreement with The Organisation for Timeshare in Europe (OTE) to carry out a major project that will analyse and update the scale of the timeshare industry in Europe and calculate its economic impact.
A comprehensive survey with solid statistics will enable OTE to formulate policies and recommendations to help boost the current levels of timeshare across Europe. To do this work TTRI will gather evidence about the size of the industry, its evolution over time, distribution among different countries and the economic contribution timeshare makes.
The project will be developed over a 10-month period. Preliminary results will be presented at the annual OTE conference in Madrid in October 2008.
Completed Projects
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
We provided research on:
- Productivity and Competitiveness
- Tourism Satellite Accounts
- The London Olympics Bid
The Price Sensitivity of Tourism and its Impact on the Canaries.
The project involves collaborative research with academics in the University of La Laguna, Canaries. The first phase of the research involves econometric modelling to quantify the sensitivity of tourism demand to changes in relative rates of inflation, exchange rates in competing destinations, expenditure in the main origin countries and specific one-off events. The second phase involves the quantification of the interrelationships between tourism and other sectors of the economy. The research will provide information that will contribute to effective policy formation and is funded by the government of Tenerife.
The Price Sensitivity of Tourism and its Impact on the Maltese Economy
The project involves collaborative research with tourism experts in the Malta Tourism Authority and is part of an international research project between the Institute, Malta, Cyprus and the Canary Islands. The research aims to quantify the sensitivity of tourism demand in Malta to changes in its underlying determinants, providing elasticity estimates which can be compared with those for Cyprus and the Canary Islands. The effects of tourism on other sectors of the economy is quantified using the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling methodology. The project findings will assist policy-making by the Malta Tourism Authority, and the Cyprus Tourism Organisation and the government of Tenerife which all sponsored the collaborative research project.
Economic Effects of Tourism in Cyprus
The Cyprus Tourism Organisation has sponsored research on the economic effects of tourism in Cyprus and an International Conference on Tourism Competitiveness. The conference, jointly organised by the Institute, enabled researchers and policy makers from across the world to discuss their research findings. The project showed that in the case of tourists from the UK, tourism demand in Cyprus is highly sensitive to changes in prices in Cyprus and its main competitors. Worsening price competitiveness in Cyprus would have large adverse effects on UK tourists' contribution to income, employment and the balance of payments of Cyprus, while the island's competitors would gain. A computable general equilibrium model developed for the Cypriot economy shows that accession to the European Union would give rise to net benefits for tourism in Cyprus.
The Economic Impact of Tourism in Brazil
Research on the impact of tourism in Brazil is being undertaken with academics in the University of Brasilia and is sponsored by the government of Brazil. The project will use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of Brazil to quantify the effects of changes in tourism demand and in tourism policies on tourism-related sectors in Brazil and on all other sectors of the economy. The results are of particular interest as the Brazilian economy is at the forefront of development in Latin America and is contributing significantly to the growth prospects of other countries in the region. The future growth of the economy is likely to be strongly related to the expansion of service sector activities, notably domestic and international tourism. Thus, the expansion of tourism should help to alleviate poverty by providing sources of income and employment in addition to those provided by manufacturing activities. The research will indicate the policies which should best assist the achievement of these outcomes.
New Policy Models Developed for Visit Scotland
The Christel DeHaan Tourism and Travel Research Institute has undertaken a major new development project for VisitScotland - the organisation responsible for marketing tourism in Scotland and for formulating its strategic development priorities.
To aid future planning and policy development, the Institute has developed a set of Tourism Indicators that provide a concise and informative view of current developments and future trends for tourism in Scotland. In addition, a Forecasting Model has also been developed to provide forecasts of tourism arrivals and expenditure in Scotland in both the near and the long term future, based on the key drivers of tourism in the country. Finally, a Tourism Scenario Model has been constructed to quantify the effects of changes in tourism demand, shocks such as foot and mouth disease and policy changes on tourism-related sectors such as hotels and restaurants, as well as on every other sector of the Scottish economy. The models are integrated such that key indicator values are used to provide tourism forecasts, which are then fed into the scenario model. The integrated model, termed the Moffat Model, will provide an important tool for VisitScotland to use in its tourism policy development and planning.