Sex and Drug Tourism in Amsterdam
Demand
Sources of demands for sex tourism in Amsterdam are both international and domestic. They are usually the leisure or business travelers. This illustrates that sex tourism is usually not the main purpose of a travel. It is a subset of leisure or business travel.
Travelers in Amsterdam are mainly the British and Dutch. They are the two largest tourism markets that make up a good third of all hotel bed nights in the city. (Appendix, Fig.1) The Americans market is of great importance to the sex tourism too. Even though the number of Americans visiting Amsterdam has dropped due to the economic crisis in United State, they constituted 11% of the total visitors in the city. The decreasing international arrivals have been compensated by the optimistic growth in domestic arrivals. This could probably be attributed to the local’s rising interest in short-stay hotel trips in the Netherlands. Furthermore, there is emergence of the new tourist markets and that includes the Asians and the Chinese from China. The number of arrivals from Asia and China increased significantly as compared to the previous year (Appendix, Fig.2).
Price Elasticity of Demand (PED)
The price elasticity of demand (PED) of sex tourism in Amsterdam is less than 1 and demand elastic. This shows that an increase in price would result in a more than proportional decrease in quantity demanded, ceteris paribus. The diagram on the left illustrates that the consumers are price sensitive; an increase in price from P2 to P3, results in a fall in demand from Q2 to Q3.
As mentioned earlier, sex tourism is the subset of leisure or business travel. Since it is not the main purpose of travel, it is not deemed as a necessity, thus the demand for sex tourism is elastic. Furthermore, there are always close substitutes to sex tourism in Amsterdam. These substitutes include sex tourism in other countries such as Belgium, sex clubs and also non-commercial forms of sexual relationships. In addition,
Sources of demands for sex tourism in Amsterdam are both international and domestic. They are usually the leisure or business travelers. This illustrates that sex tourism is usually not the main purpose of a travel. It is a subset of leisure or business travel.
Travelers in Amsterdam are mainly the British and Dutch. They are the two largest tourism markets that make up a good third of all hotel bed nights in the city. (Appendix, Fig.1) The Americans market is of great importance to the sex tourism too. Even though the number of Americans visiting Amsterdam has dropped due to the economic crisis in United State, they constituted 11% of the total visitors in the city. The decreasing international arrivals have been compensated by the optimistic growth in domestic arrivals. This could probably be attributed to the local’s rising interest in short-stay hotel trips in the Netherlands. Furthermore, there is emergence of the new tourist markets and that includes the Asians and the Chinese from China. The number of arrivals from Asia and China increased significantly as compared to the previous year (Appendix, Fig.2).
Price Elasticity of Demand (PED)
The price elasticity of demand (PED) of sex tourism in Amsterdam is less than 1 and demand elastic. This shows that an increase in price would result in a more than proportional decrease in quantity demanded, ceteris paribus. The diagram on the left illustrates that the consumers are price sensitive; an increase in price from P2 to P3, results in a fall in demand from Q2 to Q3.
As mentioned earlier, sex tourism is the subset of leisure or business travel. Since it is not the main purpose of travel, it is not deemed as a necessity, thus the demand for sex tourism is elastic. Furthermore, there are always close substitutes to sex tourism in Amsterdam. These substitutes include sex tourism in other countries such as Belgium, sex clubs and also non-commercial forms of sexual relationships. In addition,