International Tourism in the Coastal Regions of Five Mediterranean Countries

Abstract

This article aims to highlight both some of the determinants of foreign tourist demand and the main structural features of coastal regions in Italy, Spain, Greece, Croatia, and Cyprus over the period 1999–2004. The analysis is carried out on the basis of an original three-dimensional panel dataset featuring a wide range of variables collected from a large set of sources. Weighted price competitiveness indicators are also calculated with weights built so as to contemporaneously account for the relative importance, for each region of destination, of both its foreign tourist markets and of its rival regions. Descriptive analysis shows that foreign tourists' hotel arrivals and night stays increased in Adriatic Croatia, entailing a rise in its market shares. In other regions, tourist flows either stagnated or declined, owing to the decrease in the number of travelers from Germany, one of the two main tourist markets for the Mediterranean countries. Italy's coastal regions performed below their potential, succeeding in attracting tourists mainly for the local art and historic heritage sites rather than for their "sea-and-sun" attractions. They could only partially reap the benefits of increased air passenger traffic, and their market shares did not increase despite price competiveness gains. Panel data regressions with fixed nationality, regional, and time effects show that international tourist flows to coastal regions are negatively correlated with price indicators and with the distance between coastal regions and tourists' homelands. Tourist movements are instead positively correlated with the country of origin's per capita GDP, the presence of renowned heritage or natural sites, and the international air passenger traffic at local airports. Policy interventions that foster structural improvements, such as the accessibility by air from abroad, may improve the qualitative competitiveness of the coastal regions.

Eco Labels and Tourism Flows: How Much is a Blue Flag Worth?

“…The signal effectiveness in attracting tourists is significant for seaside tourists' arrivals but not for the overall tourist flow. A high geographic detail in data on arrivals allows to capture a seaside-specific phenomenon, while the use of heavily aggregated data might explain the small or not significant effect, as reported in the literature (Marrocu and Paci, 2013;Quintiliani, 2009). In fact, signaling policies address specific market segments: the Blue Flag Program addresses seaside tourism, the World Heritage Program addresses cultural tourism, etc.…”

“…The present work places itself within this strand of the literature and is aimed at specifically estimating the effect of environmental accreditation of beaches on tourism flows inbound in Italy. While only two works have been found in the literature considering Blue Flag awarding as a control variable for tourism demand modeling, they exploit either geographically disaggregated data (Marrocu and Paci, 2013) or multiple year observations (Quintiliani, 2009). This study originally contributes to the literature by simultaneously exploiting a high geographic disaggregation of data and a relatively high number of periods.…”

“…Moreover, the analysis -based on provincial data -focuses exclusively on seaside inbound tourism, disentangled from total inbound flows. This represents a key innovation with respect to existing studies on the topic, which refer to overall regional or provincial flows, irrespective of its seaside or non-seaside nature (Quintiliani, 2009;Marrocu and Paci, 2013). Having provided a robust estimate of the label effectiveness in attracting foreign tourists, we will show how the estimate is affected by the inclusion in the analysis of non-seaside tourism.…”

Discontinuidades y limitaciones de los últimos planes turísticos de España en relación a la sostenibilidad ambiental del turismo de sol y playa

“…Efectivamente, el rápido desarrollo turístico español se ha fundamentado tradicionalmente en el aumento de la oferta y en el ajuste continuado de precios a la baja con el objetivo de atraer un número de turistas cada vez mayor. El auge de las compañías aéreas de bajo coste ha intensificado esta dinámica (Quintiliani, 2009;Vera Rebollo y Ivars, 2009) y todo ello ha tenido como resultado en algunos casos la pérdida de la capacidad de atracción del destino (Buhalis, 2000) y su deterioro urbano, físico y ambiental. Como se verá más adelante, tanto el Plan 2020 (Secretaría General de Turismo, 2007, p. 20) II Plan Futures (1996-1999 cuando aparecen las primeras referencias concretas a la sostenibilidad ambiental.…”

Local Governance, Resources and Tourism Promotion: The Case of Taormina

“…Equitable resource management -time, budget and environment -along with social awareness, quality of experience, involvement of local communities, desire for discovery, technology, sustainability, knowledge and well-being, are becoming the paths to reach a longterm vision of tourism development (Gnoth, 2002;Quintiliani, 2009).…”