Modelling International Tourism Demand for Zimbabwe

This paper uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration to estimate the coefficients of the determinants of international tourism demand for Zimbabwe for the period 1998 to 2005. The results show that taste formation, transport costs, changes in global income and certain specific events have a significant impact on international tourism demand. This implies that the improvement of international tourism infrastructure (in order to reduce travel costs and enhance the quality of services to tourists) so as to reinforce taste formation are important for attracting more international tourists to Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the authorities can potentially increase international tourism demand for the country by promoting pleasant events in the country.