Analysis of the Co-integration Between the Number of Cruise Tourists and the World Unemployment Rate

Cruise tourism has a great share in marine tourism and appears to be a fast-growing and income-generating sector in the travel industry. The cruise industry, which has a worldwide income of over 27 billion dollars, contributes to employment through the job opportunities it offers. The aim of this study is to analyze whether there is a short- and long-term co-integration relationship between the number of cruise tourists in the world and the world unemployment rate. In this context, data between 1991 and 2019 were analyzed using the Granger causality and vector error correction (VECM) methods. According to the results, there is an equilibrium relationship between the two series in the long term, a 1% change in the number of world cruise tourists reduces the world unemployment rate by 7.6%, and an imbalance between the two series in the short term will reach equilibrium after approximately three years. Keywords: Cruise shipping, Marine tourism, Co-integration test, VECM analysis, World unemployment rate