Price and Expenditure Elasticities of Demand for Domest lc Tourism in Iran: the Case of Hamedan Province

Domestic tourism has an important role in socio-economicdevelopment in several ways including creating jobs andimproving income distribution, although sever al researcheshave been done on tourism demand, a small proportion ofthemhave been on domestic tourism, in this paper, the price andexpenditure elasticities of the household demand for domestictourism in iran, focusing on the case of hamedan province, areestimated by the almost ideal demand system (aids) model.the data set used is of a cross-section type and has beencollected from hamedan tourists regarding their domestic trips.this data set includes 504 domestic tourist households thattheir trips last at least one overnight in hamedan province insummer of 2003. the expenditure elasticity r esults for food,accommodation, transportation, visit fees (entrance fees toenter the points of interest), and souvenirs commodity groupsare estimated by about 1.34, 1.32, 1.47, 0.36 and 0.47,respectively, and for total trip to provinces were close to one.the price elasticities of demand for the five commodity groupsand for total trips to provinces are less than one. this impliesthat an increase ill the total budget of the household yearly tripswould be allocated by a smaller proportion to hamedan trip ascompared to other provinces. another implication is that anincrease in the price of visit fees, for example, can increase thetotal receipts to compensate the high costs of repair andmaintenance ofthe valuable points of interest.