TITLE:
An Analysis of Tourist Spending by International Visitors to the United States during the COVID-19 Pandemic
AUTHORS:
Eyitayo Olaleye, Jacob Oluwoye
KEYWORDS:
Tourists’ Spending, COVID-19, United States, VAR, International Visitors
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.7,
July
15,
2022
ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected
sectors that require international travel. One of these is the tourism sector.
This study examined the impact of the pandemic on the spending patterns of
international tourists in the United States. Using a vector autoregressive
(VAR) framework, the study explored the influences of COVID cases and deaths on
the number of international visitors in the United States. Exogenous variables
in the VAR model are tourists’ expenditure, GDP, and the total population of
tourists’ countries of residence. The lag order selected by Akaike and Schwarz
information criteria was 2. The findings revealed that immediate past values of
COVID cases and deaths determined their current figures as well as the count of
international tourists in the U.S. Furthermore, tourists’ expenditure, as well
as GDP and population of tourists’ countries, influenced the propensities of
international tourists to select the U.S.
as their destination. However, tourists’ spending was not found a significant determinant of COVID cases and deaths, suggesting that coronavirus did not respect the spending abilities of the
tourists. The study concluded that the U.S. authorities should be prepared for
more inflow of visitors from countries with high GDP and high populations and
should be cautious of high spending patterns of visitors as this may add to the
existing inflationary pressures in the country.