Examining domestic transactions of incoming tourists with credit cards in Turkey

Abstract

Changes in visitors' spending habits that take place within a definite region can be applied to a model of the local economy to carry out any conversions to be linked with income. To put into action some tourism and banking strategies and practices, the domestic transactions carried out by international credit and debit cards can be used in the framework of visitors' behaviors. This study analyses in detail the relation between the incoming visitors' transactions by cards usage (including cash withdrawal) and the number of visitors, their spending in Turkey and also foreign exchange rates by using the Granger Causality Test and Vector Auto Regression (VAR) Analysis. According to the results, the number of domestic transactions with international credit cards could be explained by the number of incoming tourists and the visitors' spending along with the volume of domestic transactions with international credit cards. The results also reveal that foreign exchange rate seems to have a minimal effect which could be ignored in the analysis of the present study.