Rural tourism in Spain: natural resources as sources of competitive advantage

Transcription

1 World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sust. Development, Vol. 1, No. 1, Rural tourism in Spain: natural resources as sources of competitive advantage Patricia Ordoñez Faculty of Economics, Department of Business Administration and Accountability, University of Oviedo, Avd. del Cristo, s/n, Oviedo Asturias, Spain Fax: *Corresponding author Jose Parreño and Raul Pino Faculty of Engineering, Department of Business Administration and Accountability, University of Oviedo, Campus de Viesques, edificio energia Gijon Asturias, Spain Fax: Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse the state of the art of the Spanish rural tourism sector, as well as performing forecasts for this strategically important sector of Spanish economy. Section 1 of the paper describes rural tourism in Spain, while in Section 2 three time series belonging to this sector are analysed, and then forecasts are calculated by applying Box-Jenkins and Artificial Neural Nets methodologies. Finally, the paper summarises major conclusions and implications for policy makers and managers involved in rural tourism in Spain. Keywords: competitive advantage; rural tourism; Spain. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ordoñez, P., Parreño, J. and Pino, R. (2005) Rural tourism in Spain: natural resources as sources of competitive advantage, World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sust. Development, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp Biographical notes: Dr. Patricia Ordoñez works for the Department of Business Administration and Accountability, at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Oviedo, Spain. Her doctoral thesis was entitled Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management and Human Resource Management: Influence on Organisational Performance. Her teaching and research initiatives focus on the areas of strategic management, knowledge management, intellectual capital measuring and reporting, organisational learning and human resources management. Dr. Jose Parreño works for the Department of Business Administration and Accountability, at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering of the University of Oviedo, Spain. His doctoral thesis was entitled Univariate and Multivariate Box-Jenkins Methodology: Application to the Electricity Market, Tourism and Copyright 2005 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

2 46 P. Ordoñez, J. Parreño and R. Pino Construction Sectors in Spain. His teaching and research initiatives focus on the areas of technology transfer, production management, and forecasting and applied artificial intelligence. Dr. Raul Pino works for the Department of Business Administration and Accountability, at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering of the University of Oviedo, Spain. His doctoral thesis was entitled Time Series Forecasting with Artificial Neural Nets. An application to the Spanish Electricity Market. His teaching and research initiatives focus on the areas of forecasting, applied artificial intelligence and simulation. 1 Introduction Rural tourism offers 9,000 accommodations in Spain, which means an average growth of 24.5% during last ten years, according to the report published by the real state consulting company IREA. If we analyse rural tourism in Spain by regions, the region of Castilla-Leon is the most important market for rural tourism in Spain, both in terms of offer and demand, due to its geographical localisation and extension. Catalonia, Cantabria and Asturias occupy a second position, all of them with occupation levels above national average. Its offer includes both interior and coastal tourism. Additionally, IREA report highlights that Murcia and Balearic Islands attract more rural tourists than the actual capacity of accommodation these regions offer. Basque Country, Madrid, and Catalonia exhibit high levels of occupation due to the fact that these regions are simultaneously the basic issuing markets of rural tourism users. The study highlights that the basic driver of this kind of tourism is the appearance of a new demand, built by people who look for open spaces where they can enjoy recreational sport and cultural activities, and are highly interested in the historical and natural heritage. IREA also points out that the delay of the Spanish rural tourism sector is rooted in the strong roots of the sol y playa (sun and sand) model that Spain historically experimented. This fact helps to explain why the first initiatives in this area were developed in the northern regions of the country (Asturias, Navarra, and Basque Country), which were relatively marginalised from dominant tourism. Regarding the future, the consulting company recognises that Spanish rural tourism must cope with a number of challenges to achieve a sustainable development, to increase the quality and facilities of the accommodations, get the professionalisation of the sector, create an associate group, standardise the regulating norms, solve the problem of normalised supply, as well as increase the promotion and commercialisation in the external market, basically in Europe. The rural tourism demand has undergone a huge increase in Spain (from 3.5 millions in 1990 to 8.5 millions in 1998). This spectacular increase is related to the process of changes that tourism demand is experimenting at international level, where the motivational changes play a key role. The tourist travels as a result of a need to know the environment and participate in it. This implies a higher valuation of the rural issues, as well as a higher interest in the necessity to preserve the environment. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of rural tourism in Spain.

3 Rural tourism in Spain 47 2 Rural tourism in Spain Table 1 shows that in 2004, Spanish rural tourism offered its accommodations to a total number of 1,758,596 tourists. Of this outstanding figure, 1,592,168 tourists were residents of Spain and the rest came from abroad. The average number of days spent in rural accommodations in Spain was 3.13 days. The autonomous region that received the highest number of travellers was Castilla-Leon (368,664 travellers in total) and the region that received the smallest number of travellers was La Rioja (16,899 travellers in total). The region in which travellers spent more days on average was Canary Islands (8.49 days) and the region in which travellers spent least days was Galicia (2.10 days). Table 1 Number of tourists, days and average days in rural tourist sector in 2004 Autonomous regions Total Number of travellers Residents in Spain Residents in abroad Total Number of nights Residents in Spain Residents in abroad Average days Total 1,758,596 1,592, ,428 5,506,223 4,553, , Andalucía 90,141 71,259 18, , ,126 92, Aragón 96,678 88,799 7, , ,285 40, Asturias (Principado) 92,207 89,153 3, , ,050 16, Balearic Islands 43,469 8,810 34, ,090 47, , Canary Islands 31,753 12,141 19, ,735 69, , Cantabria 143, ,998 11, , ,458 36, Castilla León 368, ,661 15, , ,887 41, Castilla-La Mancha 87,108 85,472 1, , ,168 6, Catalonia 207, ,639 15, , ,279 93, Comunidad Valenciana 114, ,403 6, , ,233 34, Extremadura 58,538 54,205 4, , ,443 11, Galicia 164, ,900 13, , ,043 26, Madrid 57,794 55,810 1, , ,563 6, Murcia 30,521 29, , ,348 4, Navarra 66,691 64,229 2, , ,898 12, Basque Country 87,890 78,702 9, , ,884 34, Rioja 16,899 16, ,429 40,996 2, Ceuta and Melilla Inter-annual rate Source: Spain s National Statistics Institute (2005)

4 48 P. Ordoñez, J. Parreño and R. Pino If we have a look at Table 2, we observe that, according to estimations, there were 8,236 operating accommodations and 71,508 beds in rural tourist sector in Spain in On average, the level of occupation was 20.80% and this increased to during weekends. The estimated number of employees working in the rural tourist sector was 13,506. The autonomous region with the biggest number of operating rural accommodations was Castilla-Leon (1,445), followed by Catalonia (1,204), and Asturias (724). Table 2 Rural accommodations in Spain by autonomous regions Autonomous regions No. of operating rural accommodations (estimation) No. of beds (estimation) Level of occupation Level of occupation during weekends Level of occupation by bedrooms No. of employees Total 8,236 71, ,506 Andalucía 481 4, Aragón 641 4, Asturias (Principado) 724 4, Balearic Islands 136 2, Canary Islands 630 3, Cantabria 272 4, Castilla León 1,445 12, ,391 Castilla-La Mancha 569 4, Catalonia 1,024 8, ,524 Comunidad Valenciana 606 6, Extremadura 184 2, Galicia 430 4, Madrid 103 1, Murcia 286 2, Navarra 413 2, Basque Country 227 2, Rioja Ceuta and Melilla Inter-annual rate Source: Spain s National Statistics Institute (2005) Table 3 exhibits the distribution (in percentages) of Spanish travellers according to the autonomous region from which the travellers come from.

5 Rural tourism in Spain 49 Table 3 Distribution of Spanish travellers according to the autonomous region from which they come

6 50 P. Ordoñez, J. Parreño and R. Pino Table 3 Distribution of Spanish travellers according to the autonomous region from which they come (continued)

7 Rural tourism in Spain 51 Table 4 shows the number of travellers and days spent in rural accommodations in Spain. Germany and Great Britain are the countries from which more travellers come to Spain to spend their holidays in rural accommodations. As shown in Table 4, Luxembourg residents are not very interested in Spanish rural tourism as just 126 travellers arrived from this country last year. Table 4 Travellers and number of nights (by country of origin) Travellers Nights Countries Total % Total % Total 1,758, ,506, Residents in Spain 1,592, ,553, Residents abroad 166, , Total residents abroad 166, , Total residents in EU (excluding Spain) 146, , Germany 42, , Austria 1, , Belgium 6, , Denmark , Finland , France 27, , Greece , The Netherlands 11, , Ireland 2, , Italy 5, , Luxembourg Portugal 4, , Great Britain 39, , Sweden 1, , Other European countries 6, , Africa , USA 5, , Rest of American continent 5, , Asia , Other countries 1, , Source: Spain s National Statistics Institute (2005) Finally, Table 5 shows the evolution of rural tourism in Spain. April, July, August, October and December are the five months of the year in which more travellers use rural accommodations in Spain.

8 52 P. Ordoñez, J. Parreño and R. Pino Table 5 Evolution of rural tourism in 2004 (travellers, nights and average days) Number of travellers Number of nights Total Residents in Spain Residents in abroad Total Residents in Spain Residents in abroad Average days Total 1,758,596 1,592, ,428 5,506,223 4,553, , January 70,849 66,678 4, , ,214 28, February 104,443 96,594 7, , ,546 45, March 125, ,170 8, , ,914 54, April 174, ,920 14, , ,423 76, May 132, ,288 18, , ,411 83, June 141, ,760 16, , ,611 86, July 177, ,357 23, , , , August 243, ,522 23,796 1,239,459 1,072, , September 145, ,190 20, , , , October 178, ,659 14, , ,246 79, November 115, ,801 8, , ,191 47, December 148, ,229 6, , ,599 40, Source: Spain s National Statistics Institute (2005) 3 Forecasting rural tourism in Spain The time series analysed in this paper belong to the rural tourism sector in Spain, and have been obtained from the Tempus data base at the Spanish Statistical Institute (INE) website ( total number of Spanish tourists total number of foreign tourists total number of rural accommodations open. All the three time series are composed of 51 monthly observations, from January 2001 to March 2005 and the time plots are depicted in Figures 1 3. Figure 1 Total number of Spanish tourists

9 Rural tourism in Spain 53 Figure 2 Total number of foreign tourists Figure 3 Total number of rural accommodations open Figures 1 and 2 show that number of Spanish and foreign tourists time series exhibit a strongly seasonal pattern, as expected, given the fact that tourism is a seasonal sector. The order of this annual seasonality is twelve, as the series are composed of monthly observations. In Figures 1 and 2, it can also be appreciated that these series show a slightly increasing trend. Spanish tourists series reaches a global maximum value every year in August and three local maximum peaks in April, October, and December. Foreign tourists series reaches similar maximum values in July and August, and two local maximums in April and December. Figure 3 shows that the number of rural accommodations open series is not as strongly seasonal as the number of tourists ones; instead, it shows a stronger increasing trend. Each year, the number of rural accommodations open reaches a maximum peak in August, and minimum values in December and January, despite of the fact that Spanish tourists increase during December. With these data, forecasts are going to be calculated for the period April December To obtain these forecasts, two well-known forecasting methods are used: Box-Jenkins (1970) and Artificial Neural Nets. Many authors have approached the issue of forecasting tourism time series in Spain (Esteban, 1993, 1997; González and

10 54 P. Ordoñez, J. Parreño and R. Pino Moral, 1995; Espasa, 1996; García-Ferrer and Queralt, 1997), as well as in other countries (Martin and Witt, 1989; Witt and Witt, 1995; Kulendran and King, 1997; Kulendran and Witt, 2001; Song et al., 2003). 3.1 Forecasts Figures 4 6 show the forecasts calculated with Box-Jenkins (BJ) and Neural Nets (NN) methods for the period April December Figure 4 Forecasts for Spanish tourists Figure 5 Forecasts for foreign tourists Figure 6 Forecasts for rural accommodations open

11 Rural tourism in Spain 55 Figures 4 and 5 show that both methods perform similar forecasts for both Spanish and foreign tourists series, predicting the three peaks in August, October and December for Spanish tourists, and the July-August similar values for the foreign tourists series. However, the two forecasting methods do not perform such similar forecasts for rural accommodations open, as can be seen in Figure 6: The shape of these curves is similar, and so does forecasting values for April, May, and June; but there is a gap between the forecasting curves during the period July November. 4 Conclusions Section 1 of the paper analyses the current situation of rural tourism in Spain. In particular, the paper describes the situation of this sector in terms of number of travellers (Spanish and non-spanish residents), Spanish regions from which resident tourists come and countries from which non-resident tourists come, average number of days tourists spend in Spanish rural accommodations and more. The results obtained from forecasting three key time series from the rural tourism sector are important, not only for tourism companies when they come to decision-taking, but also for local and central administrations when they come to establish their policies in the field. References Box, G.E.P. and Jenkins, G.M. (1970) Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control, Holden Day, San Francisco. Espasa, A. (1996) Características de la demanda en los estudios econométricos sobre el turismo e implicaciones de política económica y de estrategia empresarial, Información Comercial Española, Vol. 749, pp Esteban, A. (1993) Previsiones de la demanda turística, Información Comercial Española, Vol. 749, pp Esteban, A. (1997) La demanda turística internacional, La actividad turística española en 1996, AECIT, Vol. 1997, pp García-Ferrer, A. and Queralt, R.A. (1997) A note on forecasting international tourism demand in Spain, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 13, pp González, P. and Moral, P. (1995) An analysis of the international tourism demand in Spain, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 11, pp Kulendran, N. and King, M.L. (1997) Forecasting international quarterly tourist flows using error-correction and time series models, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 13, pp Kulendran, N. and Witt, S.F. (2001) Cointegration vs. least squares regression, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 28, pp Martin, A. and Witt, F. (1989) Forecasting tourism demand: a comparison of the accuracy of several quantitative methods, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 5, pp Song, H., Witt, S.F. and Jensen, T.C. (2003) Tourism forecasting: accuracy of alternative econometric models, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 19, pp

12 56 P. Ordoñez, J. Parreño and R. Pino Spain s National Statistics Institute (INE) (2005) Encuesta de Ocupación en Alojamientos Turísticos, Alojamientos de turismo rural, Witt, S.F. and Witt, C.A. (1995) Forecasting tourism demand: a review of empirical research, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 11, pp Website IREA (2005) IREA s report on rural tourism.