Tourism trends in the world's main destinations before and after the 2008 financial crisis using UNWTO official data

The first decade of the present century has been characterized by several economic shocks such as the 2008 financial crisis. In this data article we present the annual percentage growth rates of the main tourism indicators in the world׳s top tourist destinations: the United States, China, France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Mexico and Austria. We use data from the Compendium of Tourism Statistics provided by the World Tourism Organization (http://www2.unwto.org/content/data-0). It has been demonstrated that the dynamics of growth in the tourism industry pose different challenges to each destination in the previous study "Positioning and clustering of the world׳s top tourist destinations by means of dimensionality reduction techniques for categorical data" (Claveria and Poluzzi, 2016, [1]). We provide a descriptive analysis of the variables over the period comprised between 2000 and 2010. We complement the analysis by graphing the evolution of the main variables so as to visually represent the co-movements between tourism variables and economic growth

Positioning and clustering of the world's top tourist destinations by means of dimensionality reduction techniques for categorical data

This study aims to cluster the world's top tourist destinations based on the growth of the main tourism indicators over the period between 2000 and 2010. It ranks the destinations with respect to the average growth rate over the sample period. The results find that both China and Turkey are at the top of the rankings of all variables. By assigning a numerical value to each country corresponding to its position, a Spearman's coefficient is calculated and a negative correlation found between a destination's dependency on tourism and the profitability of the tourism activity. Finally, several multivariate techniques for dimensionality reduction are used to cluster all destinations according to their positioning. Three groups are obtained: China, Turkey, and the rest of the destinations. These results show that the persistent growth of the tourism industry poses different challenges in different markets regarding destination marketing and management

Positioning and clustering of the world's top tourist destinations by means of dimensionality reduction techniques for categorical data

This study aims to cluster the world's top tourist destinations based on the growth of the main tourism indicators over the period between 2000 and 2010. It ranks the destinations with respect to the average growth rate over the sample period. The results find that both China and Turkey are at the top of the rankings of all variables. By assigning a numerical value to each country corresponding to its position, a Spearman's coefficient is calculated and a negative correlation found between a destination's dependency on tourism and the profitability of the tourism activity. Finally, several multivariate techniques for dimensionality reduction are used to cluster all destinations according to their positioning. Three groups are obtained: China, Turkey, and the rest of the destinations. These results show that the persistent growth of the tourism industry poses different challenges in different markets regarding destination marketing and management