ARRIVALS OF FOREIGN TOURISTS TO POLAND

Tourism is one of the world’s largest economic sectors. It creates jobs, drives exports, and generates prosperity across the world. As well as its direct economic impact, the industry has significant indirect and induced impacts. In 2017, the sector accounted for 10.4% of global GDP and 313 million jobs, or 9.9% of total employment. Tourism is important to significant extent for numerous fields of social and economic life in Poland. The aim of the article is to examine the impacts of two factors influencing the total amount of money spent by foreign tourists visiting Poland. The first factor is the number of trips to Poland, and the second one – the mean spending per trip.


Introduction
The term "tourism" -in accordance with the regulation No. 692/2011 of the European Parliament and the Council -means the activities of visitors taking a trip to a main destination outside their usual environment, for Anna Turczak less than a year, for any main purpose, including business, leisure or other personal purpose other than to be employed by a resident entity in the place visited. The "tourists" term does not mean the same as the 'visitors' term. The 'visitors' category refers to tourists (i.e. visitors who occupied accommodation establishments within the given location for at least one night) and same-day visitors (not accommodated).

The economic impact of tourism
Tourism contributes to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment in many ways. The total contribution of the industry consists of the direct, indirect and induced impacts on the economy. The indirect impact includes the GDP and jobs supported by: a) tourism investment spending (such as the purchase of new aircraft and construction of new hotels); b) government spending on tourism marketing and promotion, aviation, administration, security services, sanitation services, etc.; c) domestic purchases of goods and services including -for example -purchases of food and cleaning services by hotels, of fuel and catering services by airlines, and IT services by travel agents (Travel & tourism…, 2018). The induced contribution measures the GDP and jobs supported by the spending of those who are directly or indirectly employed by the tourism industry. The data concerning Poland, the European Union and the whole world are given in Table 1. In 2017, the world total contribution of tourism to GDP was 62.9 bn USD per country (with direct contribution of 21.5 bn USD). The sector supported on average 2,341.0 thous. jobs (937.5 thous. directly). It should also be mentioned that tourism attracted investment of 4.8 bn USD/country and generated on average 8.1 bn USD in exports.
As shown by the data in table 1, the relative size of the sector in the Polish economy is considerably smaller than in the average European Union economy and smaller than in the average economy in the world.

Inbound tourism in Poland -key information
Poland has a diversified natural environment. The Baltic Sea in the north and the Sudetes and Carpathian mountain ranges in the south form natural borders of the country. The best recreational destinations include (Turczak, 2018): a) Masurian lakes (the Masurian Lake District in north-eastern Poland counts around 2,000 lakes on an area of about 52,000 km 2 ); b) Baltic coast (there are dozens of sea resorts on the coast of Baltic Sea; the coast stretches 770 km; a distinctive part of the coast is the Hel Peninsula, which is 35 km long); c) Tatra mountains (this is the highest mountain range of Carpathians; the most famous resort for skiing and hiking in the Tatras is Zakopane); d) Sudetes (there are lots of tourist resort -e.g. Karpacz, Szklarska Poręba -for skiing and hiking in the Karkonosze mountains, which is a part of the Sudetes mountain range); e) Białowieża Forest (Białowieża National Park is the last fragment of the primeval forest which once stretched across the European plain; it is home to the world's largest population of European bison and many other endangered species; the oldest oaks in this forest are 650 years old). Since 2014, the Central Statistical Office has conducted research providing information on the arrivals of foreigners to Poland. There have been also collected data on expenditures of foreigners related to travel. According to that collection of data, there were 83.8 million foreigners, including 18.3 million tourists and 65.5 million same-day visitors, who came to Poland in 2017 (13.7%, 14.1% and 13.3% more than in 2014, respectively). Almost every second arriving foreigner was in the age group of 35-54 (in 2017, 48.2%). People aged 25-34 also constituted a large group (18.8%).
Tourists travel for variety of different reasons. The purposes of international tourism can be, among others (Inkson, Minnaert, 2012, pp. 21-22): leisure, recreation, and holidays; visiting friends and relatives; education and training; business and professional reasons; health treatment; religion and pilgrimages; shopping.  In 2017, expenditure of foreigners visiting Poland 1 amounted to 56.7 bn PLN, which was 31.6% more than in 2014, of which tourists -32.8 bn PLN (42.6% more than in 2014) and same-day visitors -23.9 bn PLN (18.9% more than in 2014).  Vol. 28/2, 4/2018

Methodology used
The objective of causal analysis is to determine how various factors affect a given variable (Szczecińska, 2007). Therefore, causal analysis can answer the question of whether a particular factor causes an increase or a decrease of the studied variable, and enables us to assess how big the impact of this factor is (Turczak, 2016).
Expenditure of tourists arriving from abroad to Poland might be calculated by multiplication of the number of foreign tourists 2 visiting Poland and the average spending per trip. The following notation has been adopted for the purpose of this article:  .
The same can be shown in a different way, namely:  Then, using the logarithm property stipulating that the logarithm of a product of some numbers is equal to the sum of the logarithms of these numbers (Turczak, 2017), the equation presented below can be derived:

Analysis of tourism expenditure
The first task is to compare expenditure incurred in connection with foreign tourists' trips to Poland in 2017 with the analogous value in 2014. Table 2 contains the relevant data. The top place was taken by the Netherlands (the greatest increase, i.e. 373.2% in nominal terms and 371.5% in real terms). The last place was occupied by Switzerland (the largest decrease, 16.4% and 16.7%, respectively).

Analysis of the number of foreign tourists
The next task carried out is to compare the number of foreign tourists in 2017 in relation to the number in 2014. All the data needed have been presented in Table 3.
The first position belonged to the Netherlands (an increase of 261.8%). In turn, the lowest index number concerned the United Kingdom.

Analysis of tourism expenditure per visitor
The third task is to compare expenditure incurred in connection with foreign tourists' trips to Poland in proportion to the number of persons visiting this country. The necessary data have been given in Table 4. The top place was taken by China (the greatest increase, i.e. 108.9% in nominal terms and 108.2% in real terms). The last place was occupied by Norway (the largest decrease, 24.4% and 24.7%, respectively).

Results of the causal analysis
In the last part of this research the remaining stages of the logarithmic method will be performed. The results are shown in Table 5.

Conclusions
Visitors are people taking a trip to a main destination outside their usual environment, for less than a year, for any main purpose (business, leisure or other personal purpose) other than to be employed by a resident entity in the place visited. Visitors are classified as tourists if their trip includes an overnight stay, and as same-day visitors (excursionists) otherwise.
Tourism affects destination areas in many ways. That is why it is so important to emphasise that the proper objectives of sustainable tourism are: to improve the quality of life of host communities, to provide a high quality experience for visitors, and -at the same time -to take care of the environment (Mill, Morrison, 2009, p. 61).
Tourism, which already supports one in every ten jobs on the planet, is a dynamic engine of employment opportunity. Over the past ten years, one in five of all jobs created across the world has been in this sector.
2017 was one of the strongest years of GDP growth in a decade with robust consumer spending worldwide. The global growth transferred again into tourism with the sector's direct growth of 4.6% outpacing the global economy for the seventh successive year.
Poland is one of the countries with constantly increasing number of visitors. In 2017 the number of tourist arrivals to this country amounted to 18.3 million. In 2017 in Poland, the entire contribution of tourism to GDP was 89.9 bn PLN (4.5% of total GDP). The direct contribution to GDP was 38.2 bn PLN (1.9% of GDP). The whole contribution of tourism to employment accounted for 4.5% (738 thous. jobs), and the industry supported 332 thous.