How important are borders for tourism? The case of Europe

Abstract

Using a bilateral dataset of trips for 32 European countries for the period 2012–2019, we aim to gauge the size and evolution of the border effect on tourism: the extent to which domestic tourism is greater (or lesser) than international tourism. We found that the tourism flow within countries was 24 times greater than between countries. Also, we show that, relative to 2012, the border effect diminished by 13% in 2019. Our results suggest that the size (and evolution) of the border effect is the same for trips that last between one and three nights (short trips) and those that last four nights or more (long trips). Nonetheless, our findings show that bilateral determinants that represent travel and transaction costs are more important when explaining short trips than long ones.