RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS OF SELECTED FACTORS AND INDICATORS OF TOURIST TRAFFIC

Tourism takes an important place in Croatian economy, thus it is necessary to take into account factors that may impact tourism results. The purpose of the present study is to analyse the relationship between selected factors that are related to emitive countries on the one hand, and the number of tourist arrivals and tourist nights in Croatia, on the other hand. This paper deals with factors that are related to emitive countries, for which it is assumed that they may be connected with tourism results in receptive countries, and on which receptive countries cannot have any influence: GDP per capita, average annual net earnings, population, average travel costs, average travel time, and average distance of emitive countries from destinations in Croatia. The analysis is based on the secondary data that has been gathered from domestic and foreign databases. Data has been analyzed using correlation and regression analyses. Results indicate that the relationships between selected indicators are relatively weak or small, but most often they are not statistically significant. However, according to the findings, it can be concluded that: (a) there is a statistically significant relationship between GDP per capita in selected emitive countries and the number of tourist nights in Croatia, (b) there is a statistically significant relationship between average annual net earnings and the number of tourist arrivals in Croatia, (c) there is a statistically significant relationship between average annual net earnings and the number of tourist nights in Croatia. Results indicate that there are factors that are not related to investments in marketing, tourism offer and infrastructure, but they impact tourism results in Croatia.