Deep habits and travel resilience after COVID-19

Abstract

This research examines how deep travel habits in the form of habit formation and reduced substitutability between tourism travel and other leisure goods impact travel resilience after COVID-19. Using microdata for almost 3000 tourists in Andalusia (Spain), we relate post-pandemic outbreak tourism participation to pre-pandemic travelling intensity and whether taking a vacation is considered a priority good. In doing so, we control for standard sociodemographic characteristics and province fixed effects. Our results clearly show that the probability of continuing travelling during the summer of 2020 is positively associated with pre-pandemic travel intensity and tourism being considered a priority leisure activity. Travel resilience is found to be strongly associated with income, education level and the tenure of a second residence.

Preference Shifts During Health Shocks: Foreign Tourists’ Expenditure–Price Elasticity Throughout the Pandemic

“…This result is nonetheless surprising, as the related literature points to people preferring traveling by private car over public transportation modes during COVID-19 ( Christidis et al, 2022 ; Eisenmann et al, 2021 ). Most likely, this finding is driven by a selection mechanism: in the summer of 2020 those who continue traveling are mainly those for whom traveling is a “priority” good ( Boto-García & Baños-Pino, 2023 ). As such, if they travel, they might be willing to pay more for faster means of transport that avoid waiting times, multiple connections, and stopovers.…”

“…The tourism sector involves several subindustries, and it seems highly important to uncover how foreign spending reacts to the distinct pricing strategies implemented by the different travel sectors involved. From a marketing viewpoint, our paper allows hospitality and destination managers to identify travel-resilient segments ( Boto-García & Baños-Pino, 2023 ). As we have shown, expenditure–price elasticities notably vary by country of origin and type of tourism services considered.…”

“…For instance, Bronner and de Hoog (2017) show that expenditure on vacation trips increases more during expansions than it drops during recessions. From this viewpoint, tourism demand is highly resilient, and despite travel restrictions and health risks, a nonnegligible share of people continued traveling during the summer of 2020 ( Boto-García & Baños-Pino, 2023 ).…”

Are destinations reverting to the pre-pandemic “normal”?

“…Our focal variable is hotel traveler resilience, quantified by the ratio of hotel travelers in each province relative to the 2019 value, serving as a proxy for the portion of pre-pandemic demand retained by the province. 1 Based on existent literature we consider a set of determinants related to market size (Batista e Silva et al, 2018; Rogerson and Rogerson, 2020; Watson and Deller, 2022), distance to the source (Calgaro et al, 2014; Gössling et al, 2021; Gallego and Font, 2019), income profile (Ridderstaat, 2021; Shin et al, 2002; Boto García and Baños-Pino, 2023), seasonality (Koo et al, 2016; Batista e Silva et al, 2018), and pandemic incidence (Duro et al, 2021, 2022).…”