Empiricial analysis of factors affecting the performance of tourism industry in Turkey

The performance of the tourism sector in terms of the economic sense, that is to say, tourism incomes should be increased to benefit more from the positive economic impacts of tourism. In order to increase tourism incomes and to establish a more effective tourism policy, the factors affecting tourism incomes are to be analyzed well. Surely, there are many factors that affect tourism incomes (economic, social, technological, demographic, environmental, etc.). However, economic factors only affecting tourism incomes are discussed in our study. In the economics literature, the number of studies in this sense is limited to articles. This study has been one of the first thesises on this issue in our country. In the study, how the number of tourists, economic growth, real exchange rate and inflation variables affect tourism incomes have been analyzed with unit root tests, Johansen cointegration, VECM, Hatemi-J cointegration analysis, Frequency Domain causality test and Toda-Yamamoto with Bootstrap Based Toda-Yamamoto causality tests by using monthly data between 2000 and 2012. As a result, it was determined that Turkey's tourism receipts have a long-term relationship with the number of tourists, economic growth, real exchange rate and inflation variables. However, the long-term relationship was not observed when structural breaks consider. In addition, as a result of analysis its were determined that the number of tourists, the real exchange rate and inflation have an effect on Turkey's tourism receipts, and tourism receipts has an effect on the number of tourists, economic growth and inflation. Keywords: Tourism Economics, Tourism Performance, Cointegration Analysis, Bootstrap Based Toda-Yamamoto Causality Test.