An Assessment of Visitor Expenditure Methods and Models

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
There has been a great deal of research devoted to estimating visitor expenditures in countries, regions, cities, and other areas as related to specific events. Such estimates are essential for producing comprehensive estimates of tourism’s economic benefits in an area. This review of methods used to estimate visitor expenditures applies definitions of relevant concepts developed by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) to promote standardization and quality in tourism statistics. Three contexts are identified for visitor-expenditure studies: occasion, venue, and time frame. Occasion recognizes the visitor-expenditure studies that have focused on annual visitor expenditures in a study area in contrast to those focusing on visitor expenditures associated with a given event. The latter occasion raises a number of issues regarding what constituted qualified visitors and qualified expenditures. Relevance, coverage, and accuracy principles are applied from the literature to assess 11 methods and models. Guidance is provided for selecting valid approaches by occasion.