6. Conclusions and policy implications
In this paper, we examine the effective timing of economic policies actions in the tourism industry of a small open economy. The choice of examining effectiveness of economic policy actions in the tourism sector is because, by its nature, tourism sector is facing both internal and external constraints and responds continuously to them. Therefore, formulating effective policy actions is not only an open challenge to researchers but it may also equip policy makers and private agents with a rule of thumb for effective tourism policy actions as to “how” and “when” to act. A typical example of such an economy is Singapore that provides extended quarterly data. In this paper we, first, derive the influencing factors of the tourism demand function. However, knowing the affecting factors of tourism demand function and ignoring their time impact does not help in formulating effective responses from tourism policy authorities and private tourism agents in Singapore. For this reason, we extend the literature of tourism demand function by identifying the time dependence of these factors. This extension, allows us to formulate the best timing (effectiveness) of, both, governmental tourism policy and private agents’ tourism actions.
