Determinants of the Likelihood of Tourist Spending in Cultural Micro-Destinations: Type, Timing, and Distance of the Activity as Predictors
Metadatos
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SAGE
Materia
Low-cost tourism Urban-cultural tourism Likelihood of spending Micro-destinations Economic sustainability
Fecha
2022-09-26Referencia bibliográfica
Vena-Oya, J., Castañeda-García, J.-A., & Rodríguez-Molina, M.-Á. (2022). Determinants of the Likelihood of Tourist Spending in Cultural Micro-Destinations: Type, Timing, and Distance of the Activity as Predictors. SAGE Open, 12(3). [https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440221125422]
Patrocinador
State Research Agency PID2019-110941RB-I00/SRA; Junta de Andalucia B-SEJ-381-UGR18; European Commission B-SEJ-381-UGR18Resumen
Although tourism expenditure has long been a pertinent topic in studies dealing with cultural tourism, its importance in recent
years has become even more marked due to the consequences of low-cost tourism that many destinations are suffering.
This need has been further aggravated by the impact of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. Now, the only sustainable means
of increasing destination revenue is to generate greater financial profitability of tourism-related activities, as opposed to
increasing tourist volumes. The present study analyzes the determinants of the likelihood of tourist spending in an urbancultural
destination whose economic sustainability is being threatened by low-cost tourism. To this end, all the tourism
activities of the sample (672 in total) were recorded in real time during the stay via a purpose-designed mobile application.
Given the nested structure of the sample, multilevel modeling was used: the characteristics of the different tourism activities
were used as predictor variables, while characteristics of the tourist were used as control variables. Regarding the former,
the results suggest that spending is more likely at the beginning of the stay and in relation to non-cultural tourism activities
(restaurants, shopping, transport, etc.). An interaction effect between activity location and timing (beginning vs. end of stay)
was also demonstrated: at the beginning of the stay, the greater likelihood of spending was related to services or attractions
outside the city center; and, toward the end, spending patterns become more static, based close to the city center. The aim is
to explain the probability of tourist expenditure at each spending opportunity, thus contributing to the current knowledge of
total tourist spending. Knowledge of tourist expenditure patterns is a prerequisite for raising profitability-per-tourist when
increasing visitor volumes is not an option.