Travel and Tourism in the New Member States of the European Union

Abstract

Europe, in particular the European Union, brings together the most important tourism’ destinations on the continent and is the most important travel and tourism market. The European continent consolidates its position as the most visited region in the world, as the 671 million tourists reported last year represents just over half of the total number of tourists worldwide. According to the latest report released by the World Tourism Organization, the total number of international tourists reached a record 1.322 billion in 2017, up 7% compared with 2016. In the given context, the present paper provides an assessment of travel and tourism sector in the eleven New Member States of the EU, located in the Central and Eastern Europe, in terms of wellestablished indicators of tourism industry, such as the competitiveness of the sector, the balance of payments in international tourism, or the impact of tourism in the economy. The research methods used will include empirical data analysis, testing correlations and cluster analysis. Thus, in the initial phase of the research process, a brief literature review will be conducted, followed by the latest statistical data collection, interpretation and aggregation for each of the eleven member countries. Then, in regards to the cluster analysis, this will be carried out through the STATISTICA software, using the k-means method, and starting from five main components: the tourism competitiveness index, the multiplier effect, the share of tourism exports, receipts from international tourism, direct impact of tourism in GDP.

Keywords

• New Member States of the EU
• balance of payments
• multiplier effect of tourism
• tourism competiveness
• cluster analysis