Graduation Year

2018

Date of Submission

4-2018

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Ricardo Fernholz

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

2018 Tierra T Patmavanu

Abstract

This paper focuses on finding the key determinants influencing Las Vegas tourism demand from years 1987 to 2016. Based on previous tourism literature, this study explores various macroeconomic variables and Las Vegas-specific variables in explaining the effect on Las Vegas visitor volume.

The results of this study indicate that U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), world GDP, and Las Vegas housing prices are major factors in determining Las Vegas visitor volume. Additionally, Las Vegas housing prices are inversely related to Las Vegas tourism demand. These variables are statistically significant and help explain visitor volume in Las Vegas.

As expected, this article indicates that U.S. GDP, world GDP, U.S. median household income, and employment per population ratio have a positive relationship whereas U.S. unemployment rate and airline fare index per CPI have a negative correlation with Las Vegas visitor volume. In addition, this paper also finds that tourism in Las Vegas is considered a normal good, as indicated by the coefficients of greater than 1 for log U.S. GDP and log world GDP in most models.

Overall, these findings are consistent with earlier tourism studies that macroeconomic variables including GDP, income, and employment are positively related to tourism. However, transportation costs and relative prices are negatively related to tourism demand.

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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