How inter-city high-speed rail influences tourism arrivals: evidence from social media check-in data

This paper attempts to investigate the impacts of inter-city high-speed rail (HSR) on tourism arrivals by employing a novel data of check-ins generated from social media. This type of check-in data collected in a case study (Hangzhou, China) reveals its high correlation with tourism activities and is feasible to act as a proxy of real tourism arrivals. A nonlinear regression model is developed to discover the temporal redistribution of tourism arrivals caused by HSR on weekends and holidays. Results show that Nanjing–Hangzhou HSR can significantly raise the number of visitors from Nanjing with a growth of 29.44% on Saturdays and 41.72% on Sundays. Further analysis on hourly distribution of these check-ins on weekends detects early arrival on Friday nights and longer stay on Sunday afternoons after HSR operates. Moreover, negative effect of seasonal climate change on tourism is also alleviated by HSR. This paper verifies the effectiveness of social media check-in data in tourism research and proposes practicable methodologies to quantitatively analyse this type of data.     

Does Tourism Really Lead to Peace? A Global View

There has been much rhetoric about tourism's role in promoting world peace. This research takes a global perspective examining the relationship between peace and tourism across 111 different countries using a panel data model using two indicators, international tourist arrivals and the Institute for Economics and Peace's Global Peace Index. The results indicate that tourism is the beneficiary of peace rather than grounds for peace. Peace is most important to tourism in medium income destinations but still important for high income nations. No relationship exists between peace and tourism arrivals for low income nations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of high-speed rail on market concentration and Lerner index in China's airline market

China has become the second largest air transport market in the world since 2005. Its total length of high-speed rail (HSR) tracks in operation has been greater than that of all other countries combined since 2012. HSR poses a significant challenge to the Chinese airline industry, especially on major airline routes. The impacts of HSR on two market-competition measures, namely, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and the Lerner index, are examined in this study. In general, the entry of HSR had the effect of reducing market power measured by both the unweighted and weighted Lerner indexes. However, the Lerner index and HHI of the routes with parallel HSR services remained consistently higher than those of the routes without parallel HSR services.     

Impacts of high speed rail on railroad network accessibility in China

High speed rail (HSR) is changing the overall travel accessibility of cities in China. There have been a number of studies of high speed rail in China. However, detailed spatiotemporal accessibility pattern of cities affected by the operation of high speed rail in China has not been reported. This study takes a timetable-based accessibility evaluation approach to analyze the changes in travel time, travel cost, and distance accessibility for each of the four main stages of HSR development in China: no HSR service in Stage 1 before August 2008, several HSR lines in Stage 2 between August 2008 and July 2011, reduced operating speed of HSR trains in Stage 3 between August 2011 and November 2012, and addition of new HSR lines and reduction of ticket fares in Stage 4 between December 2012 and January 2013. In addition to the “corridor effect” and the “center-diffusion” pattern, this paper investigates the impacts of HSR on changes in in-vehicle travel time and out-of-vehicle travel time with respect to the policy changes that reduced the operating speed of HSR trains, rearranged the train timetable, and lowered the ticket fare on HSR trains. The analysis results indicate the spatiotemporal pattern of Chinese cities affected by these policy changes. This study is useful for assessing HSR impacts on the accessibility of various cities across China as well as serving as a decision-making support to policies related to adjustments of HSR operation and planning of future HSR routes by considering the existing HSR and non-HSR railway lines.     

Taiwan's international tourism: a time series analysis with calendar effects and joint outlier adjustments

In this paper, we examine monthly tourist arrivals from Japan, Hong Kong and the USA between January 1971 and December 2008. Our purpose is to find events or variables that affect Taiwan's international tourism. We find that the Chinese New Year has a positive effect on tourist arrivals from Hong Kong, but negative effects for other countries. Through outlier detection, we obtain a better understanding of the effects of non‐recurring events that have impacted Taiwan's international tourism. Using transfer function model with automatic outlier detection and adjustment, we find that the exchange rate influences tourist arrivals from Japan and Hong Kong. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of tourism on HSR: Spanish empirical evidence derived from a multi-criteria corridor selection methodology

The exorbitant cost of new High-Speed Rail (HSR) lines requires a selection methodology to define which HSR corridors within a network should be built first, and the most suitable evaluation tool appears to be the multi-criteria approach. In any corridor-ranking methodology, and especially in countries with high tourism attractiveness, tourism impacts on HSR should be considered as a variable.In addition to economic geography and destination choice models, the current literature on tourism demand is dominated by econometric models using a single-equation time-series based approach. However little research has been done so far on methodologies to rank HSR corridors taking into account the tourism variable. In 2014, a ranking methodology developed by Todorovich and Hagler was validated using the current Spanish HSR network. Twelve variables were used to create an index to assign scores to the city pairs, but tourism was not included as a variable. The findings showed the consistency of the model for ranking pairs mainly in the top O–D relations; however the tool failed to discriminate clearly between secondary groups of corridors.The aim of this paper is to assess empirically the positive effect of tourism on HSR and to enhance the abovementioned ranking tool with a tourism database. The new methodology is tested by application to 1176 city pairs in Spain, and the results clearly show that the implementation of a tourism variable helps discriminate between secondary groups of corridors and offers a more effective approach for determining the implications of tourism on HSR.     

Aviation’s inclusion in international climate policy regimes: Implications for the Caribbean tourism industry

Nations with tourism dependant economies are becoming increasingly concerned about the inclusion of aviation in greenhouse gas mitigation policy for international bunker fuels and more recently adaptation policy proposals. The central concern is that such policies will increase the cost of traveling by air, therefore reducing visitor arrivals to long-haul, tourism-dependent destinations, often small island developing states. This study used a tourism arrivals model to examine the implications of currently proposed climate policies for the world’s most tourism dependant region – the Caribbean. Results indicate that under current proposals for both mitigation and adaptation focused climate policy, reductions in tourist arrivals from the major markets of Europe and North America would be negligible versus business as usual growth projections Only under the most stringent mitigation policy scenario. Which may portend a post-2020 policy regime, is a significant decrease in tourist arrivals predicted. Of the climate policies assessed, the adaptation policy had the potential to provide greater economic benefits to the Caribbean region.     

Are tourist arrivals stationary? Evidence from BRIC countries

In this study, we attempted to analyse whether the shocks to tourist arrivals in BRIC countries are temporary or permanent, by analysing the stationary characteristics of the data in panel framework. We found that, for Brazil, Russia and India, tourist arrivals are stationary process, whereas for China it is non-stationary process. This implies that shocks to the tourism sector in Brazil, Russia and India have only temporary effect, whereas the shocks to China's tourism sector have permanent effects.     

Modelling tourist flow association for tourism demand forecasting

The purpose of this study is to examine tourism demand for Singapore from 1995 to 2013 by six major origin countries which belong to three different regions. Unlike prior tourism research, we take into account the dependence relations among the different tourist flows via copula. Copula is a statistical model of dependence and measurement of association. Specifically, we investigate the association between two tourist flows in each region. Based on empirical copula estimation, the Frank function has been identified as the most appropriate to capture the pairwise dependence structures of tourist flows. The copula-based approach combined with econometric models is proposed for tourism demand analysis that can be used to predict tourist arrivals. We apply the copula-ARDL and copula-ECM frameworks to generate joint forecasts of tourist arrivals from three regions. The findings show that the forecast performance of the Frank copula-based model outperforms the benchmark model which corresponds to the independence structure (no association) of tourist flows.     

Accessibility impacts of China’s high-speed rail network

The large-scale implementation of High-Speed Rail (HSR) network in China not only offers a new option for travelers’ mode choice, but also may influence, or even generate, the redistribution of demographic and economic activities. As has been observed over the past several years in other countries, the impact of HSR spans a wide range. However, few quantitative studies have been conducted to measure this impact. As a new attempt, this study uses accessibility analysis for quantifying the impact of China’s HSR network. Weighted average travel times and travel costs, contour measures, and potential accessibility are employed as indicators of accessibility at the macro or national level. Forty-nine major cities in the HSR network are used in the accessibility analysis. Accessibility quantification and spatial distribution analysis for the study cities are performed on a Geographical Information System (GIS) platform. Accessibilities associated with varying availabilities of HSR, conventional rail, and airline are estimated and compared. The selected indicators and computational methods are found effective in evaluating the accessibility impacts of HSR from different conceptualization strategies and perspectives. They also offer complementary information on accessibility capacity of the study cities created by the HSR network.     

Towards Integration of Sustainability into Tourism Planning in Developing Countries: Egypt as a Case Study

This article argues that planning and thus implementation of sustainable tourism development would differ not only between the developed and less developed countries’ (LDCs) tourist destinations but also from one destination to another in developing countries. Although sustainability has been introduced to the global world as an avenue for the protection of the resources in the developing world that the intrageneration equity is one of its objectives, developing countries still lack the effective planning techniques and tools for implementation. Nevertheless, developed countries have got better opportunities for the implementation of such principles, ranging from appropriate funds and expertise needed for the planning tasks, to more stable economic and environmental conditions. As the capabilities of developing countries’ tourist destinations for adopting the principles of sustainability would differ, each of those destinations should be treated separately while assessing such abilities to implement sustainable tourism development. For this purpose, this article approaches the evaluation of the Egyptian tourist planning mechanism from a sustainable point of view. In order to achieve the research objectives, a benchmark technique has been employed by using sustainability indicators as criteria to judge the appropriateness of the tourist planning system against the principles of sustainable tourism development.     

Tourism demand: a panel data approach

This paper estimates the coefficients of the determinants of international tourism demand for the period 1995–2014 in the USA using the gravity framework. The analysis is based on a panel dataset of tourist arrivals among 14 countries using autoregressive distributed lag methods. The results show real gross domestic product, consumer price index, real exchange rate and certain specific events have a significant impact on international tourism demand. The income elasticity suggests that tourism is non-luxury goods, and prices and real exchange rate have negative relation to tourist arrivals. We also find that tourism transport infrastructure is a significant determinant of tourist arrivals into USA. This implies that infrastructure to reinforce taste formation is important to attract more international tourists to USA. In addition, results also suggest implications for public and private tourism authorities.     

A methodology for prioritising HSR corridors: from U.S. theory to Spanish practice

The assessment of methodologies to prioritise the construction of new high-speed rail (HSR) corridors has recently become a key issue for transport planners in countries like the U.S., where HSR does not exist. In a climate of financial instability since the onset of the global crisis of 2007–2008, support for new projects is being eroded by serious concerns over the extremely steep costs of high-speed rail, and there is a need for the scientific clarification of the procedure for prioritizing construction.In 2009 a new ranking methodology was developed and applied to 30,000 city pairs in the U.S. to determine their suitability for high-speed rail investment. The existing literature on ranking tools for prioritising HSR corridors is practically non-existent, and, as none of these U.S. lines has been built or put into in operation, this methodology has not been validated. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to these ranking models and highlight their importance in the HSR planning process. The preliminary ranking tool described in this work has been validated using data from the current HSR Spanish network. The results confirm the consistency of the model as a first approach to ranking pairs, mainly for the top O–D relations; however the model has some drawbacks chiefly due to the type of variables used, and their assigned weightings. Finally, some specific improvements are proposed for this ranking approach in order to provide policymakers with a useful tool when planning the construction of new HSR networks.     

Corridors,hybrids and networks: three global development strategies for high speed rail

After 50 years of experience with high-speed rail (HSR) development in Asia and Europe, there are important lessons that can be derived to inform future efforts to introduce HSR. This paper identifies and explores three strategic models of HSR development: (1) exclusive corridors (e.g., Japan), (2) hybrid networks—both national (e.g., France and Germany) and international (e.g., European Union), and (3) comprehensive national networks (e.g., China and Spain). Evaluations of these models yield outcomes that range from generally positive assessments of the corridor and national hybrid models to more concerns and uncertainties about the international hybrid and comprehensive national network models. When applying these lessons to the United States, contextual differences can make direct applications problematic. At the same time, though, certain elements of these three models that have been proven to be successful elsewhere may be adaptable to the U.S. and other newcomers to HSR development.     

Impact of high-speed rail on regional economic disparity in China

This paper investigates a fundamental question related to the massive railway infrastructure development in China. What is the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on regional economic disparity? The question is investigated from three perspectives. First, the influence of HSR on regional economic disparity is discussed theoretically from the perspective of New Economic Geography. Second, the variation in economic disparity at both the national and regional levels is investigated using three indexes: the weighted coefficient of variation, the Theil index and the Gini index. Third, the linkages between regional economic growth and HSR is measured empirically from a quantitative and qualitative perspective using an endogenous growth modelling framework with a panel data covering the period 2000–2014. The rail network density is adopted as a proxy to reflect the quantity change in rail investment. Three accessibility indicators (weighted average travel time, potential accessibility and daily accessibility) are introduced to capture the improvement of HSR transport quality. Our findings confirm that regional economic disparity has been decreased since the development of HSR. HSR has promoted regional economic convergence in China. Specifically, the positive effect of rail network density on regional economic growth is found to be significant in the East and North, whereas the positive effect of accessibility change is found to be more significant in the Middle Reaches of Yangtze River, the Southwest and the South China.     

Tourism in ASEAN-5: A novel panel unit-root test for shocks persistence with gradual structural breaks and common factors

This study investigates whether shocks to tourist arrivals in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand (ASEAN-5) are permanent or transitory, given the frequent and severe external shocks experienced by the tourism industry. Using monthly data from 2000 to 2019, we employ a novel panel unit-root test that controls for cross-correlations, multiple gradual structural breaks, and other nonlinearities present in the data to assess the stationarity properties of tourist arrivals. Additionally, we apply a panel unit-root test that controls for cross-correlations and allows for abrupt structural changes for robustness. The empirical findings reveal that shocks to tourist arrivals in the ASEAN-5 countries exert persistent effects. Our results demonstrate nonstationarity within the series, illuminated by our careful consideration of both gradual and abrupt structural breaks. This finding underscores the necessity for policy interventions to mitigate the impact of adverse shocks on the tourism industry.     

Spain: highs and lows of 20 years of HSR operation

This paper has been written in response to the Viewpoint contribution by the author Button (2012) entitled: “Is there any economic justification for high-speed railways in the United States?”. In this article, the Spanish HSR high-speed rail network is used as an argument against certain HSR investments. Several of the data presented by the author are misleading and some of the information given in connection with Spain is incomplete. As the Journal of Transport Geography is widely read by policymakers and the scientific community, Button’s misrepresentation could cause serious damage. We therefore set out to clarify the data used by Kenneth Button and to explore some points in greater detail, although in no case eschewing criticism of Spain. Although excessive Spanish investment in public infrastructure over the last twenty years has probably had a negative impact on the real estate bubble, investments in HSR infrastructure in Spain have specifically been accompanied by two particular facts that need to be distinguished from other countries’ experience. These facts cannot be overlooked and will be discussed in this paper. They relate firstly to the total amount of European funds used in HSR construction and secondly to the technological and scientific innovations developed in Spain linked to the HSR market.     

Modelling international tourism demand and volatility in small island tourism economies

Small island tourism economies (SITEs) vary in their size, land area, location, narrow resource bases, economic development, overwhelming reliance on tourism and consistent inflow of foreign direct investment for economic growth. Small island tourism economics differ in their ethnic diversity, political systems, economic and environmental vulnerability, ecological fragility and the risks facing investors. Owing to natural disasters, ethnic conflicts, crime and the threat of global terrorism, there have been dramatic changes in the arrivals of international tourists to SITEs. These variations in international tourism demand to SITEs, particularly the conditional variance (or volatility) in international tourist arrivals, have not previously been analysed in the tourism research literature. An examination of the conditional volatility of international tourist arrivals is essential for policy analysis and marketing purposes. This paper models the conditional mean and conditional variance of the logarithm of monthly international tourist arrivals and the growth rate (or log‐difference) in the monthly international tourist arrivals for six SITEs, namely Barbados, Cyprus, Dominica, Fiji, Maldives and Seychelles. Diagnostic checks of the regularity conditions of the logarithm of monthly international tourist arrivals and their growth rates suggest that the estimated univariate models of trends and volatility are statistically adequate. Therefore, the estimated models are appropriate for purposes of public and private sector management of tourism. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The determinants of inbound tourism to Malaysia: a panel data analysis

Malaysia has experienced a significant increase in tourist arrivals over the past 10 years. The challenge is to sustain this growth and therefore it is important to understand the factors influencing inbound tourism to Malaysia. This paper investigates the economic and non-economic determinants of international tourist flows to Malaysia using the generalized method of moment. The annual panel data set includes the number of arrivals from 33 countries during the period 2000–2012, and the number of possible explanatory variables. It is found that habit persistence (word of mouth), income, hotel room and political stability have a positive impact on tourism demand for Malaysia. Also, results indicate that the estimated coefficients of substitute tourism price in the model are negative. This implies that the five alternative destinations are complementary destinations to Malaysia. In addition, the dummy variable for Visit Malaysia Year in 2007 and severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 had positive and negative impacts on tourism demand for Malaysia, respectively.     

Does security matter in tourism demand?

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between security and international tourist arrivals. The system Generalized Method of Moments technique is applied in two panels of 29 developed and 45 developing countries over the period 2006–2012. Employing social, economic and political security indexes beside other control variables, the results show that the relationship among all the three sub-indexes of security and tourism is positive and significant in developed nations while it is negative and significant in developing countries.