Türkiye | Interregional spending tracker: a proxy to track domestic tourism

This study demonstrates how expenditures between regions can be used to estimate domestic tourism, and gain further insights into its dynamics. We discuss additional use cases of the methodology, and offer suggestions on how it can be specialized for asking different types of questions.

Key points

• Key points:
• Tracking expenditures between regions through card transactions allow us to answer questions related to domestic tourism and the interactions between regions. It's also a relatively practical approach to data collection, and brings increased dimensionality.
• Usual residence information can be inferred from card transactions; which can be used to complement, validate, or substitute declared locations.
• According to our data, more than half of the transactions abroad (excluding Northern Cyprus) in 2023 were made by Istanbulites.
• Using our method, we were able to observe earthquake-related short-term migration trends, which can be beneficial for decision makers as an alternative source of information when delivering services for those impacted.
• Different use cases are also discussed and proposed, making use of the high granularity features of the data in terms of real-time and regional properties.

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