ABSTRACT
Global charter flight demand remined relatively stable over the last decades, and international charter flight is an integrated product of the aviation and tourism industries. To better understand charter flight tourism in Asia, this study analyses key reasons affected Taiwan's charter flight demand from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore during the period 2009‒2018, with a consideration of aviation- and tourism-related variables. Empirical results show that the reduction in scheduled flight aircraft size stimulated new charter flight demand to Taiwan, offsetting the negative effects caused by scheduled seat increment to a certain degree. This study contributes to literature by exploring the impact of scheduled flight service availability on charter flight demand, and further enriches our understanding of the impact of scheduled flight services on international tourist arrivals in terms of aircraft size. Importantly, it has implications for policymakers and stakeholders involved in charter business, assisting them in facilitating aviation and tourism recovery during the post-COVID-19 era.
ABSTRACT
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a popular non-parametric approach to examine performance and productivity of airlines;however, it could not provide statistical information such as confidence intervals on the estimated efficiency scores. We combined stochastic frontier analysis and DEA into a single framework to disentangle noise and ‘pure’ inefficiency from the DEA inefficiency scores and accordingly provide confidence intervals for the estimated efficiency scores. Monte-Carlo simulation verified that our novel model is a good alternative for the conventional DEA as well as the bootstrap DEA. Empirical application using Asia-Pacific airlines’ data (2008‒2015) shows that after accounting for the ‘pure’ random errors, the sampled Asia-Pacific airlines performed well during the study period but their ‘pure’ efficiency was declining, hence, there is still room for improvement.
ABSTRACT
This study empirically investigates the determinants and drivers of Hong Kong's inbound tourism using data from January 2019 to December 2020. Five of Hong Kong's major regional tourism source markets are selected: Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea. Our empirical results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant negative impacts on the tourism and aviation sectors in Hong Kong that are asymmetric in the source and destination countries. In addition, international travel control imposed by the Hong Kong government is often defined according to the pandemic situation in the tourism source countries, Hong Kong's inbound visitor volume is also significantly affected by the Hong Kong government's response to COVID-19 infection cases in the tourism origin markets. Our empirical results also suggest that the flying distance to Hong Kong and high tourism costs in Hong Kong reduced visitor arrival demand, whereas increased aviation services and tourism market potential contributed to tourism growth. These results suggest that the tourism industry and government agencies should cooperate to recover when the pandemic is under good control, so that Hong Kong will be regarded as a preferred and safe destination for travelers and visitors. Our study emphasizes the complementarity between pandemic control and tourism recovery. Pandemic control involves extra tests and quarantine requirements on passengers, more vigorous border control. These operational and associated financial requirements call for government support to the tourism and aviation sectors in the early stage of recovery to create a positive feedback loop.