Multi-Destination Trips and Tourism Statistics: Empirical Evidences in Sicily

Abstract

The knowledge of the actual magnitude and main features of tourism flows in a given destination is an essential prerequisite for the evaluation of tourism impacts and externalities. Indeed, many pleasure trips are often characterized by the visit to more than a single destination. Although the topic is well-documented in literature, the empirical results are limited to a few pioneering studies. The lack may be attributable to the failure of tourism organizations to collect data on multi-destination trip behaviour. This can be seen, for example, in the system of European statistics on tourism (according to the Council Directive 95/57 EC), where information on the average number of visited destinations within a single trip is not provided. This paper aims at discussing the main implications of multi-destination trips, both on tourism statistics and on destination management. It also proposes to describe the research design and main preliminary results of a survey on incoming tourism in Sicily. Some remarks dealing with the positive and negative impacts of unobserved tourism and of multi-destination trips are reported at the end. Special Issue Tourism ExternalitiesJEL L83, C83

Cruise passengers' behavior at the destination: Investigation using GPS technology

“…Moreover, the port is no more than 400 m from the city commercial and historical center. Therefore, during their stop, cruise passengers have the possibility to see the main attractions of the city or to take part in tours organized by the cruise companies, and can visit some important destinations near Palermo, such as Monreale with its famous Cathedral, the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento (included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1977), or Cefalù, one of the most important international tourist destinations in Sicily (Parroco, Vaccina, De Cantis, & Ferrante, 2012). Fig.…”

Unobserved tourism

“…Second, while on a trip a visitor might stay in more than one collective accommodation, resulting in an overestimation of the number of visitors (i.e. the ''double counting effect'') and in an underestimation of the total duration of the trip (Lickorish, 1997;Parroco, Vaccina, De Cantis, & Ferrante, 2012;Pearce, 1995). Moreover, the magnitude of this phenomenon strongly depends on tourist mobility within and between destinations, and on the geographical level considered, since the ''double counting effect'' increases as the geographical scale decreases.…”

A complex network analysis of inbound tourism in Sicily

“…The spatial distribution of tourists represents the second main strand of research for tourism in Sicily. In particular, mobility of incoming tourism has been investigated to analyze the competitiveness of Sicilian tourism destinations (Oliveri et al, 2012), to quantify the main implications of multi-destination trips in Sicily both on tourism statistics and on destination management (Parroco et al, 2012a(Parroco et al, , 2012b, to define a territorial network of tourism demand in Sicily (D'Agata et al, 2013), and to explore the issue of unobserved tourism and estimate the actual magnitude of tourism flows in the island (De Cantis et al, 2015). Two isolated case studies have identified and examined which factors have helped rural communities to successfully develop agritourism (Privitera, 2010), and the main determinants of tourism in Sicily (Provenzano, 2010).…”