Does price matter? The FMOLS and DOLS estimation of industrial countries tourists outbound to four ASEAN countries

To provide the alternative idea of tourism demand research, instead of exploring tourism demand of panel group of origins to particular destination country, this paper adopts panel analysis to find long run relationship between number of tourists outbound from 8 rich countries to the panel of 4 ASEAN countries namely Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Five statistic tests for panel unit root and ten types of panel cointegration test have ensured the appropriation of data to be estimated. The panel individual FMOLS test and group mean FMOLS and DOLS test have led to find the positive direction of price competitiveness and relative economic growth with number of outbound tourists. The results reveal that Singapore is mostly advantage compare to its neighbors in term of relative price and is not different from Malaysia and Thailand in term of relative economic growth. Philippines however need to accelerate its tourism promotion to enhance international tourist arrivals.