Dependence of the Turkish Tourism Sector on Five Countries of Origin and Tourism Demand

Abstract

Because of its fragile structure, tourism is a sector where tourist arrivals fluctuate, and competition is high. Tourism demand is changing rapidly according to many different factors. Most of the tourist arrivals to Turkey are from European countries. This paper analyzes the relationship between tourist arrivals from countries of origin and basic macroeconomic variables in the period between 2010-2020. The study, which uses the Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) boundaries testing approach, shows that tourist arrivals interact with key macroeconomic variables such as exchange rate and unemployment rate. This situation reveals the necessity of eliminating dependence on certain countries in the tourism sector and turning to different markets.