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on Tourism Economics |
| By: | Hart, Michelle (Monash University) |
| Abstract: | Tourism has grown into one of the world’s largest industries, and its dispersed nature has made it a valuable lever for boosting national economies. Consequently, a country’s ability to attract inbound tourism is closely tied to its economic wellbeing. Using panel data on bilateral tourist flows and visa restrictions from 2016-2019, this paper investigates whether liberalising visa policies truly increases inbound tourists. A structural gravity model is used to estimate the causal impact of over 1, 300 policy liberalisations, and 400 instances of policies being tightened. This paper demonstrates that liberalising visa policies has an overall positive effect on tourist arrivals, but the effect weakens with distance, as visa costs become a smaller share of total travel burden. This paper also finds that tourists going to low-GDP destinations are far more sensitive to policy changes than high-GDP countries, hinting at a destination’s demand elasticity. These findings suggest that countries should consider distance, as well as their own demand elasticity, when designing visa policies to maximise their tourism potential. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:89 |
| By: | KO, Yu-Ting |
| Abstract: | This study aims to explore the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Taiwan in the Kyushu region, particularly focusing on the establishment of facilities in Kumamoto by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), on the development of airport infrastructure and its subsequent influence on the growth of regional tourism. The research focuses on Taiwanese visitors to Kyushu, encompassing both business and leisure travelers, with particular attention to changes in the number of flights between Taiwan and Kyushu, as well as fluctuations in visitor numbers to various prefectures within Kyushu as travel destinations. By analyzing flight data and tourism statistics, the study finds that FDI from TSMC has driven an increase in the number of scheduled flights at Kumamoto and surrounding airports, leading to a rapid rise in Taiwanese visitors to Kyushu. Moreover, the travel destinations of these visitors have expanded from a previous concentration in Fukuoka to include Kumamoto, Oita, and other prefectures. The findings indicate that industrial investment significantly stimulates regional transportation and tourism sectors, contributing to a deeper understanding of the interplay between industrial development and tourism economy. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agi:wpaper:02000251 |
| By: | Lasio Laura (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy); Jack (Peiyao) Ma (University of Oxford, Oxford, UK); Andrea Mantovani (TBS Business School, Toulouse, France); Carlo Reggiani (European Commission JRC, Seville, Spain and Department of Economics, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK); Néstor Duch-Brown (European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Seville, Spain) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of online travel agencies on hotel pricing strategies, consumer behavior, and market dynamics within the hospitality sector. Using channel-level proprietary data from major hotel chains across eight European countries, we adopt a structural approach to estimate demand and supply, and simulate policy counterfactuals. Our findings reveal that online travel agencies expand demand without exerting significant competitive pressure on market prices, due to limited substitutability between sales channels. We assess potential regulatory interventions. A fee cap would benefit hotels in the sample and consumers, while hurting outside competitors. Provisions that facilitate direct communication between hotels and customers, in the spirit of the disintermediation allowed by the DMA, would be successful in shifting some sales from the platform to the hotel website while reducing margins overall. |
| Keywords: | Online Travel Agents, Platform Regulation, Hotel Pricing |
| JEL: | D40 K20 K21 L10 L50 L86 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:2507 |