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Does a country need good institutions to use tourism as an economic development activator? From a sample of non-organisation for economic co-operation and development countries, this article aims to assess the feasibility of tourism-led growth in different institutional settings. The results not only suggest that a tourism shock is good for gross domestic product growth but that inclusive institutions enhance the ability of a country to convert tourism into growth. It also emphasises that beyond tourism that remains a major transmission channel for growth, inclusive countries largely benefit from growth in their neighbouring countries. They are more able to import economic growth from abroad.

The literature on short-term rental emphasises the heterogeneity of the hosts population. Some argue that professional and opportunistic hosts differ in terms of their pricing strategy. This study highlights how differences in market perception and information create a price differential between professional and non-professional players. Proposing an original and accurate definition of professional hosts, we rely on a large dataset of almost 9000 properties and 73,000 observations to investigate the pricing behaviour of Airbnb sellers in Corsica (France). Using OLS and the double-machine learning methods, we demonstrate that a price differential exists between professional and opportunistic sellers. In addition, we assess the impact of seasonality in demand on the size and direction of this price differential. We find that professionals perceive a higher degree of market power than others during the peak season and it allows them to enhance their revenues.

Many regions and countries seek to develop their tourism industry as a strategy for economic growth. A growing body of research supports the hypothesis of tourism-led growth. This paper contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it proposes a new mechanism for sustained tourism-led growth, emphasising the crucial importance of the market segment in which a tourist destination wishes to operate. Second, it shows how a destination that is experiencing stagnation can temporarily boost its performance and improve its long-term welfare by reorienting the supply from a highly price-sensitive mass tourism product towards a more selective one of the luxury tourism. This change in focus is discussed in the light of the experience of two Spanish archipelagos. The empirical results obtained highlight the evident success of the reorientation strategy in one of these cases. The model provides theoretical support for the implementation of tourist product restructuring policies in economies that are reliant on tourism.

International audience; The literature on the peer-to-peer hospitality market largely assumes that Airbnb hosts are loyal to the platform. However, similar to hoteliers, Airbnb hosts have access to various platforms to diversify their distribution channels. In cases where hosts significantly diversify their distribution channels, they should be considered rather as professional competitors mimicking hoteliers. Proposing an original image-recognition approach to obtain a proxy of the number of platforms used by Airbnb hosts, this paper assesses the probability that a home-sharer practices multichannel distribution. Drawing on a sample of more than 3900 hosts from the region of Corsica in France, we show that a multichannel distribution strategy is commonly adopted. Furthermore, a significant fraction of small hosts uses three or more channels.

In a context in which the tourism industry is jeopardised by the COVID-19 pandemic, and potentially by other pandemics in the future, the capacity to produce accurate forecasts is crucial to stakeholders and policy-makers. This paper attempts to forecast the recovery of tourism demand for 2021 in 20 destinations worldwide. An original scenario-based judgemental forecast based on the definition of a Covid-19 Risk Exposure index is proposed to overcome the limitations of traditional forecasting methods. Three scenarios are proposed, and ex ante forecasts are generated for each destination using a baseline forecast, the developed index and a judgemental approach. The limitations and potential developments of this new forecasting model are then discussed.

No effort has been made to connect good governance and the performance of the tourism industry at the country level. We take a first step to provide empirical evidence of this positive effect. Based on a data set of 100 countries between 2002 and 2012, the impact of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) on the tourism industry is analyzed, controlling also for demographic, economic and environmental factors. Using a dynamic panel data approach, we highlight the role played by good governance in explaining differences in countries’ tourism performances, measured here as inbound tourism expenditures per inhabitant. We also observe that the impact of WGI is even higher among low-openness countries.

In this paper, we build a standard model of optimal growth, with exogenous population growth and technical change, for an economy specialised in tourism. Assuming that the production of tourism is pollution generating and that tourists are pollution adverse, we establish propositions regarding long-term growth and sustainability of tourism. We show that mass tourism only is associated with high growth rates and that in general, mass tourism is not sustainable. To sum up, our model shows that high growth sustainable tourism does not actually exists.

The aim of this paper is to study the optimal allocation of land between tourism and agricultural activities. In order to achieve this objective, an original method is implemented using both standard tools of economics and multiagents system simulation tools. The whole approach constitutes an original transdisciplinary tool for the exploration of virtual experiments.