Presentazione Ricerca

Evento riservato ai gruppi di ricerca CAST

Speaker: David Boto Garcìa, University of Oviedo | UNIOVI · Department of Economics 
Organized by: Paolo Figini, University of Bologna | Department of Economics | Center for Advanced Studies in Tourism-CAST

This paper evaluates how high-speed rail (HSR) accessibility and connectivity affects tourism seasonality. Using a panel dataset of 50 Spanish provinces in the period 2004-2019, we study the impact of variations in a synthetic indicator of province accessibility and connectivity to the HSR network on the concentration of domestic and international tourism demand. Tourism seasonality is measured through both Gini and coefficient of variation indicators. Based on two-way panel fixed effects regressions and a Dose-Response framework, we show that HSR accessibility alleviates tourism seasonality in both the domestic and international segments. The effect is found to be greater at high levels of connectivity. In the advent of forthcoming expansions of the HRS network in Spain, our findings suggests that improvements in regional accessibility and connectivity through HSR are a promising strategy to alleviate the seasonality of tourism arrivals.