World heritage sites, international tourism demand and tourist specialization in Latin America and the Caribbean 1995-2019

Abstract

The relationship between international tourism and the registration of a place as World Heritage, both tangible and intangible, has been newly studied. Nevertheless, little progress has been done with regard to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries. This paper aims to approach this problem. Furthermore, the analysis is differentiated according to the kind of destination. To do so, a specialization index is introduced indicating whether a country is specialized in tourism or not. The study is based on a panel data of 32 countries in LAC for the 1995-2019 period. Results show that there is a strong direct effect of the number of World Heritage Sites on international tourist demand and, that this relationship is much stronger for those countries that are tourism specialized. However, when differentiating between tangible and intangible heritages, tangible ones have an important significant effect on international tourist demand in not tourism specialized countries, but intangible elements not so much. Conversely, cultural intangible heritage is only significant for tourism specialized countries.