During several researches I’ve had to search the internet to find publicly available official data of prices of products and services. It’s not always an easy task, if you need to find global or foreign data.

To make the task easier for other researchers, analysts, students etc, I’ll use this blog post to collect the links to such databases. I’m also counting on the contributions of readers to constantly grow this list in time. Please post here comments about other data sources, if you know any. Thank you in advance!

Here are the sources in my list today:

Energy prices

European Union: www.energy.eu

US Energy Information Administration

Fuel (gasoline) prices

Pump price for diesel (Worldbank)

Pump price for gasoline (Worldbank)

US gasoline prices (updated daily)

EU fuel prices (updated monthly)

Consumer Price Indices

OECD data in Google

OECD Indices of Price Levels in Google

US CPI data (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

European Union data

Eurostat

Car prices in Europe (European Commission) – added on 07.Nov 2010

Who are the tourists who spend money while travelling? The rise of Chinese purchasing power is public knowledge. How much has such development affected the tourism market? What languages are the tourists speaking today and tomorrow?

UNWTO has published a survey which also includes data on tourism expenditures by country. The table in the report includes only TOP10 countries, but even this piece of information is possible to use for quick analysis and drawing some rough conclusions.

In TOP 10 are 3 mostly English speaking countries: UK, USA and Canada (Australia was not in the TOP10). The other 7 countries speak different languages.

Let’s analyze what has happened in the TOP10 list during 2000-2009. The Chinese expenditures have risen from 2,8% to 5,7% of the world’s total. China has now crossed the line of France. While the worldwide economic decline in 2009 decreased the total amount of world expenditures, Chinese expenditures increased also in absolute figures, from $36 to $49 billion USD.

Japan on the other hand has given up a large share and has fallen from 6,7% to 2,9%. The 3 large English speaking nations have also decreased from 24% to 17%. As shown on the chart below, this trend started already long before the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009.

Tourism expenditures by origin country

So when will Chinese and English languages become equally important for servicing tourists?

For a little amusement, let’s make a simple forecast and draw trendlines (using Excel TREND function as a handy tool). We also leave aside the possible influences from other languages and focus on Chinese and English. Using this approach, the almighty chart says that English and Chinese speaking tourists spendings will cross at year 2027. That’s in 17 years!

Some other conclusions:

This scenario would also mean that some other countries (languages) will also become more important, because the sum of English and Chinese shares would make only 15% in 2027 while they were 27% in 2000….

Or.. the slopes of trends have to change.

This is as far as this limited data allows to go. If somebody has the similar information for larger number of countries, let us know!

Having recently travelled to Spain and visiting Barcelona, here are my remarks on local beer prices.
In the tapas and restaurants of the main tourist attention street, La Rambla (Barcelona) the beer prices are high – 0,5 l cost almost 5 euros and 1 liter is a little below 10 euros.
Smaller beers cost 2,5 – 4 euros.
Btw. large 1 liter beers should be considered an exception in Spanish pubs (they call their pubs tapas). Very tiny beer bottles (0,25 l) are much more common. So, better order two at once!

Popular beer brands are San Miguel, Estrella and Amstel.

This is another post regarding the cost of life in European Union. At the bottom of the page is a table of price levels of food and non-alcoholic beverages in EU. Value of 100 means the average of 27 EU member states. Table is based on Eurostat data (year 2008).
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As we know, the prices are the best, if you buy in bulk. That applies to car horsepowers as well, especially in USA.

Let’s settle this and find out how much more costs BMW-s in Europe, their origin. Taken the BMW 3-series saloon, below is a calculation of the cost of 1 horsepower. Cost per horsepower is a suitable metric, because US and EU models have different engines.
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Which countries are cheap to party while travelling in Europe? And which burn the hole in your pocket?

Below is a small illustration based on Eurostat data (2008). It shows the differences of alcohol prices in Europe. Value of 100 refers to the average of 27 EU memberstates. All taxes and duties are included.
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Among the selected countries the average electricity price is 14,80 USD cents (10,21 EUR cents) per kWh. Countries/states which have near average electricity price are Malta, Massachusetts, Vermont, California.

In most European Union countries electricity costs more than in America.
Below are heatmaps of electricity costs (USD cent/kWh) in US and EU.
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