One of the notable trends in the post-1950 has been the rising importance of international tourism activities. Tourist arrivals increased from 25 million globally in 1950 to 1.133 billion in 2014 (World Tourism Organization [UNWTO] Tourism Highlights, 2015 Edition, 2015). UNWTO also reports that global tourism expenditure reached a record amount of USD 1.2 trillion, making the tourism activities a substantial share of total exports.
Most of the existing studies look at only demand-side factors, such as tourist income and exchange rate. Until recently, only a few empirical studies have been conducted to explore what supply-side factors attract or repel tourists to particular destination countries. [1] An important reason for this lack of research on supply-side factors has been the absence of quality data. However, previous studies have not taken full advantage of new sources of data available, using recent advancement of information communication technology (ICT). Improvement in ICT allows gathering quality information online.
Purpose of this project is to compile and analyse the most comprehensive primary database on hotels in the Maldives, including online data and a survey instrument. I thank Dr. Zahir for assisting to scrap data from OTA ‘booking.com’
Datasets can be downloaded from Files&Dabase link
_______________________________ [1]Demand-side factors, refers to tourist’s own decision to travel that includes economic (e.g. income) and psychological motives (e.g. seek new experience). Supply-side factors, refers to tourist motives aroused by destination attributes (e.g. beach quality) or perceptions about the destination such as security (see Crompton, 1979; Stabler, Papatheodorou, & Sinclair, 2010c).