Measuring Tourism Efficiency of European Countries by Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to measure relative efficiency of 29 European countries with the data of the year 2013 using input-oriented and constant returns to scale Data Envelopment Analysis and to offer improvement suggestions for the countries found inefficient based on their measured relative efficiency scores. Three input and three output variables are used to assess relative performances of the countries. In this study, tourism expenses, number of employees and number of beds are used as input variables; tourism receipts, tourist arrivals and number of nights spent are used as output variables. As the result of the analysis, 16 countries are found relatively efficient and 13 countries are found relatively inefficient. This study is one of the few publications within the scope of European countries based on data envelopment analysis. Unlike most researches evaluating the efficiency of tourism establishments at the micro level, this paper is thought to contribute to the related literature as it evaluates relative efficiency of the countries at the macro level for tourism industry. Considering the variables used in the analysis, it is expected to give ideas to relatively inefficient European countries on efficiency improvement.