Measuring seasonal concentration of tourism demand: comparative study of SEE countries

The paper aims to measure seasonality patterns of tourism demand with a particular emphasis on selected countries from South East Europe. The intention is to test the flow distribution in a particular time-segment. This is done by calculating several standard indicators for quantifying inequality of tourism demand in the line of assessing dispersion and concentration in tourism. The outcome is computed annual single measure of the seasonality’s extend for each selected country (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia). The calculations are based upon monthly series of total number of tourists for the period 2007-2013. The comparative analysis points to interesting research results in terms of different levels of seasonality effects, from low seasonality and no substantial meaning for tourism development (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia), to high seasonality and considerable concentration of tourism demand (Croatia and Montenegro). Furthermore, the study strongly alarms all tourism key players to focus the attention on policies and strategies in the line of modifying tourism seasonality patterns. Finally, the additional contribution of the paper lies in the fact that represents a kind of a pioneer research that empirically investigates tourism seasonality in the region and offers a comparative analysis, thus enriching the poorly developed academic work in this field in Macedonia.