Impacts on travel and holiday accommodation online booking in selected South-East European countries: a multivariate analysis approach

This paper investigates the impacts of economic indicators and the Internet penetration rate, as well as people’s ICT skills based on the Percentage of Individuals who booked travel and holiday accommodation over the Internet as the main variable under study. Recent data on member states in the European Union (EU28) are analyzed, including data on the three official EU candidate countries: Turkey, the FYR of Macedonia and Serbia. The research focuses on the position of the above mentioned EU candidates, considered part of South East Europe (SEE) and the Western Balkans (WB). The main variable under study and four variables making a statistically significant impact on the main variable are explored. High positive correlations between pairs of the variables for 30 countries were found. Multiple linear regression modelling using the OLS estimators resulted in several acceptable models. Most hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering methods resulted in clear grouping of the SEE countries (Turkey, the FYR of Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania) into the same clusters. Other more developed SEE countries in terms of the analyzed variables and utilizing specific clustering techniques joined other EU countries in different combination setups.