PRESS RELEASE:
9.700
Decreasing purchasing power of Austrian tourists abroad, weak euro weighs on travel costs to overseas destinations
Vienna, 2010
For tourists, the best value for money among a set of 25 countries analysed can be realised in Mexico (158) although the purchasing power of the euro has lost substantially since last June (194). Also other overseas destinations like the USA (108 after 124), Australia (85 after 103) and Japan (78 after 93) became relatively expensive for Austrian (and other European) tourists. Within the euro area, no major changes in relative purchasing power levels have occurred since 2009 with the exception of Greece, where a year-on-year inflation rate of 5.5% resulted in a loss of purchasing power for Austrian tourists of more than 3% compared to the previous year. Italy - Austrians' most favoured holiday destination – is on equal levels with Austria and other countries like the Netherlands, the U.K. and Cyprus in terms of purchasing power.
Purchasing Power Parities (PPP) are price relations of comparable goods and services in different countries/regions (e.g. price of 1 litre of mineral water in Austria in euro in relation to the price of 1 litre of mineral water in Switzerland in Swiss Francs, or in Slovenia in euro, etc.). For the calculation of the Price Level Index (PLI) expressing the purchasing power position of the compared country against Austria, the PPP is divided by the exchange rate and Austria scaled to 100. The PPPs are taken from surveys carried out in the framework of the European Comparison Programme under the lead of EUROSTAT and OECD. "Touristic price levels" are calculated on the basis of a weighting scheme, which is typical for consumption of tourists abroad. |
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