Modelling inter- and intra-regional tourism flows in Spain – a spatial econometric approach
Modelling inter- and intra-regional tourism flows in Spain – a spatial econometric approach

Summary/Abstract: Domestic tourism is one of the most important types of tourism in Spain, but also one of the most neglected and underresearched. The objective of this study is to 1. describe the domestic tourist flows in Spain for the year 2016 and 2. shed some light on the factors that drive this form of tourism. To describe domestic tourism, a destination-origin matrix is constructed, and the coefficients of tourist attraction for each region are calculated. The analysis of the driving factors is based on the estimation of a gravity model and a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model. The SAR model has the advantage of accounting for spatial interactions’ effects among regions. The authors’ empirical findings reveal that spatial regional dependence matters when modelling domestic tourist flows. Moreover, the level of income at both the origin and destination regions, and the characteristics of the region of destination, such as the quality of beaches, level of accessibility, and the number of museums, theme parks and natural parks are also positively associated with domestic tourism. On the contrary, distance and relative prices between the regions of origin and destination exert a negative effect. The estimates of the SAR model allow the quantification of the total, direct and spillover effects of these factors. According to this quantification, it is found that the demand for inter-regional domestic tourism is unitary income elastic and highly price elastic.

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