The impact of the financial crisis on tourism activity - Kurdistan Region of Iraq as a case study

Abstract

   The tourism sector is one of the very important sectors in the process of growth and development of many countries of the world, whether developed or developing, and the reason for the increasing importance of this sector due to the multiplicity activities and effectiveness that directly or indirectly affect GDP, however, the tourism activity compared to the other activities is affected and have high sensitivity to financial and economic instability due to the nature and especially of the tourism activity, so the argument it about the financial crisis in the Kurdistan region and its impact on the tourism activity. This research aims to study and analyze the impact of the financial crisis in the Kurdistan region on the tourism demand and tourism investment. To achieve this objective, study adopted the Econometrics analytical approach (short and long run estimation) based on the data available for the period (2007- 2018). Finally, the research reached several conclusions, including that the financial crisis in the Kurdistan region since 2014 reflected negatively and clearly on the tourism activity, thus the financial crisis leads to reduced tourism demand and tourism investment in the Kurdistan region in the short term by (0.71%), (0.15%), this impact increased to (1.62%), (2.23%) in the long term. Hence, should the government of the Kurdistan region and relevant authorities give greater attention to the tourism sector through the allocation of a sufficient proportion of the public budget of the region for tourism investment, and the government should work to attract more tourists to the region through the diversification of tourism services and active all types of tourism such as (Religious tourism, Medical tourism ... etc.).