Determinants and temporary changes in the distribution tourist expenditure between origin and destination. Evidence from the Canary islands

Abstract

Tourism is the main source of wealth for many regions, which make their territories available to the tourist industry for the creation of infrastructures and facilities for tourist services. The peculiarities of the tourist product encourage the emergence of intermediaries outside the destination, who compete to obtain a part of tourism spending, largely with the help of new technologies, taking resources away from the destinations that could be aimed at improving their growth and welfare. In the present paper, we use tourist data from the Canary Islands destination, covering the years 2006-2017, to study the share of the total tourist expenditure paid directly to the service provider in the destination, identifying their determinant variables and the evolution over the years studied. The results show that the percentage of expenditure at the destination is affected by economic, sociodemographic, travel-related characteristics and by ICT use, but, ceteris paribus, this percentage is systematically decreasing over time, even when new technologies are used in the process of buying holidays.