Fotbolls-EM och turism

Sammanfattning: Policy makers and national football associations often emphasize potential benefits of mega-events like the FIFA World Cup or UEFA EURO on tourism (or the economy in general), but empirical studies show no support for this. The effects on tourism, especially of the EUROs, are not well documented in the academic community and it is the purpose of this paper to provide some empirical evidence of the possible effects. This paper will research whether hosting a EURO provides an additional increase of incoming tourists during the years of the event and the years after. By using the gravity model as a foundation for the specification of the econometric equation, a regression analysis will be run to test if the numbers of international tourist arrivals of each host country are affected by hosting a EURO, using European non-host countries as a control group. Contrary to what might first be believed, the results show an actual longer-term decrease of international tourist arrivals in countries which host a EURO, but on a short-term basis, the results could not provide an answer of any significant effects. Conclusively, these results may indicate the EURO-event is a direct substitute to other local tourist attractions, which seem to have fewer visitors during the same year, and as the EURO is not a reoccurring event in the respective host country, it does not promote long-term tourism.