No abstract

Empirical investigation (Nowak et al., 2012) points out that vertical intraindustry trade (VIIT) in Europe is the dominant type of intra-industry trade (IIT) in the tourism sector. This article is the first in tourism literature to test separately the determinants of vertically and horizontally differentiated services, using the most recent models in the theory of IIT. We examine bilateral trade among all trading partners of the sample of European countries, covering the period 2000 to 2008. We show that differences in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and the incomedistribution overlap, as well as cultural proximity, are the most significant driving forces behind VIIT for European countries. Geographic distance has a negative effect, whereas specific tourism endowments and relative size of the economies are less conclusive. These results confirm theory predictions and most of the empirical findings related to the pattern of VIIT for the manufacturing sector. As expected, we find that determinants of VIIT cannot explain horizontal intra-industry trade (HIIT) in tourism. We suggest two alternative methods of estimation: Generalized Least Squares (GLS) logistic function and the fractional logit estimator. We conclude that there are common factors explaining IIT in the manufacturing and tourism trades.

An old industrial region’s legacy can be a serious impediment to the development of tourism and other activities by generating negative externalities and disamenities. The aim of this article is to examine whether the cost of this industrial past as valued by tourists is reflected in hotel rates of the Nord-Pas de Calais region, a forerunner of the Industrial Revolution in France. An analysis based on the hedonic price method is undertaken using geolocalized data, to decompose hotel prices into the implicit prices of a set of attributes, both private and public, including the adverse public attributes inherited from the industrial past (brownfield sites, slag heaps, industrial seaports). By comparing the importance of each factor, our analysis provides useful information for public policy and hotel management strategies. In particular, our estimations reveal a significant negative effect of these adverse inherited public attributes on hotel rates for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, but in the same order of magnitude as the effect of a tourist attraction, suggesting the potential power of public policy and local regeneration initiatives. Furthermore, our results show that hotel managers can obtain valuable information relative to the choice of a location for initial development, their investment strategy, and their communication strategy.