Tourism Uncertainty Index (TUI)

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"Ongan, S., Gocer, I., Işık, C. & Dogru, T. (2026). Measuring Tourism Uncertainty Index (TUI), Sustainable Development, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/SD.71156"
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Tourism Uncertainty Index (TUI)
The Tourism Uncertainty Index (TUI) is a novel indicator developed to measure uncertainty specifically within the tourism sector. Unlike general uncertainty measures such as Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), Geopolitical Risk (GPR), Climate Policy Uncertainty (CPU), or the World Uncertainty Index (WUI), TUI focuses exclusively on tourism-related uncertainty dynamics. To the best of our knowledge, TUI is the first tourism-specific uncertainty index constructed using a large-scale textual analysis framework applied to country-level reports and news-based sources. The index currently covers 43 countries and is available at monthly, quarterly, and annual frequencies. The database also provides Global TUI measures constructed using equal-weighted and GDP-weighted approaches.

Methodology
TUI is constructed using a Context Window (CW) methodology, which identifies the co-occurrence of tourism-related and uncertainty-related terms within predefined textual windows. Compared with traditional keyword-frequency methods, the CW approach provides a more context-sensitive measurement of uncertainty by capturing semantic relationships between terms. The index is generated using textual datasets obtained from country reports and international information sources. Its robustness has been evaluated using advanced econometric techniques, including time-series and panel-data analyses.

Why TUI Matters
TUI captures tourism-specific uncertainty dynamics related to travel disruptions, geopolitical tensions, pandemics, climate-related risks, security concerns, and tourism demand volatility.
From a sustainable tourism perspective, TUI can be interpreted as an indirect indicator of the stability, resilience, and vulnerability of sustainable tourism systems. TUI complements the sustainable tourism literature by incorporating the uncertainty dimension into tourism analysis.
With coverage of 43 countries, TUI enables cross-country comparisons and provides policymakers and researchers with a valuable tool for monitoring risks affecting tourism activity, tourism investment, sustainability transitions, and sectoral resilience.
TUI can also be used as either a dependent or independent variable in tourism demand and supply models.
TUI expands the uncertainty-index literature by introducing a sector-specific uncertainty framework for tourism and complements indices such as EPU, GPR, CPU, ESGUI, and WUI.