Gravity models for tourism demand modeling: Empirical review and outlook

Abstract

Tourism demand and its determining factors have been extensively explored over the past decades. Traditionally, the study of tourism demand modeling had focused on the use of time series models and forecasting. Nonetheless, during the last years the literature has revived the approach of gravity models, centered on structural dimension as opposed to dynamic factors. This survey aims to provide a useful overview and detailed information that discipline the existing literature and help future researchers about this field. To do so, this study reviews 143 key published papers that apply a gravity equation framework to tourism demand revealing that it has been used mainly in the context of bilateral tourist movements. Results show how, although the list of determining variables of tourist flows can be very large, GDP, population and distance are the most preponderant ones. Moreover, there are important challenges to be addressed by researchers in terms of empirical application of structural gravity models to tourism.