Macroeconomics Exercises

We will be doing a number of exercises in class to give you a ‘flavour’ of the nature of Macroeconomics….. NOT because we want to fill your head with graphs, functions, equations and statistics (there will be precious few of those, honest!), but rather because you need to appreciate the proverbial ‘Big Picture’ of Tourism that Ministers, politicians, regional tourism managers have to deal with on a day-to day-basis.

We are going to keep it simple and try to understand that figures like international visitor flows and tourism expenditures are merely the sum total of decisions being made by individuals:

• can we afford to go on holiday during ‘La Crise’?
• will we fly as far, stay as long, go on so many holidays, spend as much?
• are we frightened of SARS, Foot and Mouth, H1N1, terrorist threats….?

The answers to such questions being addressed by families everywhere results in changes in demand patterns and ultimately these are revealed in statistics recorded by the World Tourism Organisation, governments, regions etc.   In turn these are monitored, interpreted and responded to in terms of policies, strategies and decisions: the figures MEAN something, and we need to understand them.

One very useful repository of figures for LPHT is the Alsace Tourism Observatory, otherwise known as ‘Click Alsace’ which houses an enormous volume of research of a macroeconomic nature to help Tourism Planners in both the public and private sectors.  I have already created you a group account with them:

The address is:   www.clicalsace.com

So… to the exercises……………..

1 Macroeconomics quiz … the sheer scale and shape of Tourism

2.  Tourism Macroeconomics Definitions ….. what is Tourism? (…and that my surprise you when you’ve thought about it

3. French  Tourism Macroeconomics

4. French Ministires and their potential Tourism engagement.

5. Making the Tourism connection.

6. ‘La Crise’ and Tourism Macroeconomic changes. (PS.  Just as a thought… why are we not hearing the words ‘La Crise’ or ‘Crisis’ anymore….?)