Mexico and Uruguay inbound tourism demand

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to estimate the tourism demand for Mexico and Uruguay, two very different countries, but for both of which tourism is an important activity, and mainly originating from a large neighbor. We try to analyze whether the determinants of tourism demand differ depending on the size of the country, or if being a neighboring country is the main determinant. So, we analyze the relationship between the number of American tourists visiting Mexico and Argentinian tourists visiting Uruguay, and the inbound tourists’ income and the bilateral real exchange rate (RER) between the visiting country and the hosting country, following the Johansen’s methodology. We found one cointegration relationship for each country, where the income-elasticity was greater than 2 for American tourists visiting Mexico, and nearly 3 for Argentinian tourists visiting Uruguay. Bilateral RERs were also significant in both models. Moreover, forecasts show the impacts of institutional changes on the tourism sector. The impact of arrival of President Macri to power was positive for Argentinian tourists visiting Uruguay, but President Trump's arrival in the US was negative for American tourists visiting Mexico.