CRUISE PASSENGERS EXPENDITURE ANALYSIS AND PROBABILITY OF REPEAT VISITS TO COSTA RICA: A CROSS SECTION DATA ANALYSIS

The present article considers the cruising expenditure in Costa Rica as a key variable in the economic analysis of the cost and benefits associated with the cruise industry. We applied a rarely accessible and very good quality database collected by the Costa Rica Tourism Board (ICT) to estimate our econometric models. We estimate a cross-sectional regression model for the cruising expenditure, showing the existence of different tourist profiles that are related to the expenditure levels. In particular, heavy spenders are distinguishable from the other segments in terms of age, hours spent out of the ship, nationality, income levels, and their spending pattern. In addition, we also use the data to analyze the determinants of the probability of returning. We show that this probability depends positively on the level of satisfaction declared by the passenger and the number of hours spent out the ship, among other variables. We also show that older visitors are more likely to return than younger ones; first-time visitors are also more likely to return than repeat visitors and tourists whose income is larger than US$41,000 are more likely to return than other visitors. Finally, men are more likely to return than women.