Efficiency analysis of EU-25 member states as tourist destinations

In this paper, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) of the tourism sector of the different EU-25 member states is presented. Two main inputs, namely number of bed-places and number of persons employed are considered. Two additional non-discretionary inputs have been included in the analysis, namely the inverse of the number of heating degree days (HDD) and the number of properties inscribed on the World Heritage List (WHL) of UNESCO. The three outputs considered are number of tourists, number of overnight stays in all types of accommodation establishments and international tourism receipts. Only nine of the 25 member states are deemed efficient. Except France, the efficient countries do not include such traditional tourist destinations as Spain, Italy, UK or Germany. In a second phase, multidimensional scaling (MDS) is used to visualise the relationships among the countries in terms of the inputs and outputs considered and their efficiency scores. Different clusters, with clear characteristic features, emerge.