Comprehensive evaluation of the tourism seasonality using a synthetic DP2 indicator

Abstract

Tourism plays an important role in the economic development of several regions over the world. Imbalances in the activity levels throughout the year will condition the positive effects generated by the sector given that work stability and economic flows are dependent upon it. The measurement of seasonality based on indicators that are built using individual variables offers only a partial picture of the situation, or even contradictory results subject to which data were taken as a reference. This paper proposes a new system to measure seasonality. It is based on a DP2 synthetic indicator that includes both, supply and demand variables and is able to determine comprehensively how intense seasonality is. This method, which is replicable in any region, has been applied to the regions of Spain. It has been determined that the areas with a better annual stability are Madrid and the Canary Islands. This indicator also allows us to analyze the amount of information provided by each variable when constructing the indicator, as well as identifying the most relevant variables when explaining regional disparities.