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The COVID-19 pandemic has restricted both business and social life over the last two years. Stop-and-go policies enacted as containment measures have further impacted the global economy, and tourism in particular. Tourism demand shows only weak signs of a sustainable recovery. The medium-term outlook remains highly uncertain, and yet few studies have addressed the development of the tourism and leisure industries in the years ahead. In this context, we forecast demand in selected EU countries in terms of total expenditure on outbound travel (tourism imports) using a panel pooled Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) approach. Baseline and downside scenarios are elaborated to project demand for foreign travel until 2025. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airbnb has a major role to play in the competitiveness of the overall accommodation sector of individual destinations and it is rather unlikely that this role will diminish in the post-COVID-19 recovery of the tourism industry. Therefore, the present study motivates the Airbnb sector to look back at its past performance for insights that can be used in setting post-pandemic targets. In particular, this research assesses competitiveness of the Airbnb listings of 28 European cities by including hotel-related data as uncontrollable input variables within interactive data envelopment analysis modeling. The contribution lies in joining Airbnb listings and hotels into the benchmarking discussion and efficiency analysis, along with looking beyond the cumulative number of listings by dissecting the overall sector into commercial and private listings—something that has not been attempted as of yet, in spite of the ever-growing body of literature on the sharing economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, blockchain and cryptocurrencies have become topics of discussion in both research and industry. Iansiti and Lakhani perceive blockchain as a foundational technology rather than a disruptive one, since potentially new economic and social systems can be based on blockchain. Therefore, understanding blockchain and contemplating its impact on the tourism and hospitality industry is essential. The tourism and hospitality industry has to focus not on the technology itself but on how it can be used for the benefit of consumers and suppliers, while at the same time creating new tourism products or systems. The purpose of this study is to explore and identify use cases for blockchain for the tourism and hospitality industry. In addition, an outlook on potential future blockchain applications given the current COVID-19 pandemic is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses geotagged photos from Instagram to identify differences between the popular places in Vienna for residents and visitors. Moreover, we explore whether geotagged data can be useful in determining tourism demand in Vienna. The spatial analysis of 627,632 geotagged photos reveals the top-50 locations in Vienna for all-, local-, and visiting-Instagram users based on three popularity indicators (numbers of likes, comments, and photos). The results show that the top locations unique to local users are closely linked to activities residents usually pursue or location types they usually visit at their place of dwelling. In using geotagged photos to predict actual tourist arrivals to Vienna, we conclude that only the popularity indicators number of likes and number of comments based on the location ID "Vienna, Austria" for visitors to Vienna should be used and not the number of photos, since this indicator does not automatically generate engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facebook is a popular social media platform used by both the demand and the supply sides of the tourism industry. Since there is a huge amount of information on the Internet, which can lead to information overload, individuals tend to apply the principle of least effort in attempting to obtain useful information as quickly and easily as possible. One of the easiest ways to retrieve travel information is by visiting the Facebook pages of destinations. This study investigates the foundations of the usefulness of Facebook Statistics: in particular of likes on DMO Facebook pages as a potential predictor of tourism demand, in addition to previous arrival numbers. In- and out-of-sample results show that the DMOs of Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and Vienna can already utilize likes as an expedient leading indicator for demand, albeit not the only one. These findings are recommended to be incorporated into the DMOs' marketing efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airbnb is arguably the world's most popular accommodation sharing platform. Its impact on demand and supply within the tourism and hospitality industry is nowadays unquestionable. The present study delves into inspecting the efficiency of Airbnb listings of European cities, as, in spite of the success of Airbnb as a whole, it cannot be presupposed that all listings are equally successful. More specifically, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed in this first comprehensive benchmarking attempt within the domain of the sharing economy to date. This article also makes a contribution to robustness by introducing an interactivity note to the base model, thus, inspecting the results for corroboration/discrepancies and going beyond the static analyses that are common in DEA modeling. Ultimately, this is done with the goal of highlighting opportunities for inefficient Airbnb listings to properly utilize their inputs and therefore become more competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major shock to the global tourism industry. Given its peculiarity, this paper analyzes one of the most intriguing questions in the Airbnb literature – the pricing of Airbnb listings – by taking advantage of a difference-in-differences methodology that largely draws on variations in country-level policy responses to the pandemic. Relying on a dataset containing weekly information from 130,999 continuously active listings across 27 European countries from 2019 to 2020, this study first investigates the exogenous impact of response policies (proxied by the COVID-19 Stringency Index) on demand. Secondly, accounting for the endogeneity of both demand and prices, this research analyzes pricing responses to demand variations. Results show that: i) increases in the COVID-19 Stringency Index cause significant declines in Airbnb demand; ii) increases in demand cause, on average, increases in Airbnb prices; and iii) pricing strategies between commercial and private hosts differ substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data for the period 1995Q1-2012Q4, single-equation error correction models for real tourismimport demand to Brazil and real tourism export demand fromBrazil are derived. According to breakpoint tests, two periods (pre-2003 and post-2003) have to be distinguished. While international travel to and from Brazil can be seen as a luxury good for the whole period, low economic growth rates at the global level and the real appreciation of the Brazilian currency ''real'' from 2003 onward have led to stagnating real tourism exports and decreases in long-term income and price elasticities. However, high economic growth rates in Brazil and the real appreciation from 2003 onward have led to strongly growing real tourism imports and increases in long-term income and price elasticities. In line with international travel being regarded as a status symbol in Brazil, a Veblen effect of conspicuous consumption can be confirmed for the post-2003 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the standard tourism demand model for quarterly tourism exports of six different world regions and their total, the authors applied a panel econometric approach to measure potential differences in income elasticities due to the medium-term speed of growth of the world economy. The evidence demonstrated that, related to the identified different growth periods, income elasticities showed significant variations. For 1977-1992, it was possible to measure the highest income elasticities of all periods. For 1994-2003 and 2004-2013, the income elasticities decreased from period to period. For the last decade, the values of the income elasticities were lower than 1. The reasons for the decline in the income elasticities from the first to the second period were the ongoing saturation process and the slowing down of economic growth resulting in a change in consumer behaviour. The decline in income elasticities from the second to the third period was mainly due to the dramatic deterioration in the economic environment contributing to higher uncertainty about the future, with the result that precautionary saving increased, liquidity constraints limited expenditures on luxuries in favour of necessities and tourists preferred domestic destinations instead of going abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussion on the growth limits and carrying capacity of tourism destinations is not new. Already for decades, carrying capacity has been at the core of sustainable tourism development and aims at offering 'time/space-specific answers' for individual localities of various European regions. There are many definitions of this concept and the calculation of a single 'magic number' quantifying the carrying capacity is infeasible for reasons such as differences in the thresholds established by visitors and residents, ecological limits, various resources, etc. The discussion about carrying capacity in the context of regional sustainability is linked to human activities impacting a region. This impact has to be within the region's ecological limits and consistent with the region's social and economic constraints in order to ensure adequate supporting functions for the population living in the region. This means that regions should learn as much as possible about the impact of tourism on their destinations in order to develop solid and adequate policies for regional and tourism development. This paper therefore introduces a novel methodology for assessing carrying capacity in tourism destinations, which (a) is specific enough to cater to destination-specific needs, as verified by pilot-testing on various representative case studies, and (b) is general enough to be applicable to any tourism destination throughout European regions. The results emphasize the importance of such a hands-on actionable methodology, while at the same time underlining the importance of dialogue between different stakeholder groups. The value added of the developed methodology is that it simultaneously addresses regional sustainability and tourism development, while acknowledging the fact that there is no single metric or value for carrying capacity. Finally, it is applicable to various types of destinations. • Assessment of tourism carrying capacity in the context of regional sustainability. • Integrated approach with tourism exposure and territorial sensitivity indicators. • Process-oriented framework for analyzing the development of a tourism destination. • Stakeholder integration is a key factor for enhancing the applicability of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]