An Econometric Estimation of the Demand for Tourism: The Case of Switzerland

An understanding of the nature of demand is critical for the formulation of a tourism development program. It is also important for developed countries where tourism is an important source of export. Thus, the aim of this paper is two‐fold. First, it attempts to estimate an equation of the demand for tourism in order to analyse the different variables that influence the number of nights spent in a given destination. Second, by breaking up the total number of nights according to country of origin, it studies the reaction of tourists to given economic variables according to their origin.