Estudio Del Gasto en Turistas De Cruceros en Uruguay Para La Temporada 2010-2011 Mediante El Análisis De Redes

Cruise tourism in Uruguay has grown since the season 2004-2005, determining an important contribution of foreign currency each season (April to October of each year). Therefore, it is considered relevant to characterize the economic variables involved in this activity, particularly expenditure. Using data from Ministerio de Turismo (Ministry of Tourism) of cruise ships of the 2010-2011 season, this work compares the typology that emerged applying hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering methods, with those emerged when applying the network analysis (SNA) to the expenditure data in cruise passengers. Previously the authors had built a typology of cruise passengers, resulting from applying Ward's algorithm distances for binary variables (spend or not spend) in five items of expenditure. Cruise data is obtained from a sample of passengers at through a face- to-face survey with complex sample design. Information on people and spending is available since the 2005-2006 season; the present work focuses on the 2010-2011 season. On the binary expenses in each cruise, graphs are constructed, to which several metrics are applied for its description. Using the previous typology of expenditures, the authors study the association between socio-demographic characteristics of the cruise passengers with the groups created previously and the communities identified with the SNA, to determine patterns of behavior considering the expense when changing the type of cruise.