1225 | 620 | Length of stay and tourists’ visiting decisions at urban destinations: a case study from Barcelona | Daniel Miravet (1), Isabel Paulino (1), Aaron Gutiérrez (1)
The availability of time is considered from the classical to the contemporary authors as one of the most valuable resources that influence the visits of tourists during their stay in urban destinations. Thus, before deciding to go to a location, and in face of multiple alternatives, tourists tend to decide how they will distribute their time budget by ranking the destination’s attractions. The present contribution aims to appraise the influence of the length of stay on tourists’ decisions of what to visit, the degree of intensity of the visits throughout a day, as well as their spatial dispersion or concentration throughout the urban environment. With this aim, data have been collected by means of a survey conducted during the summer of 2022 to tourists staying overnight in the city of Barcelona (N=1,947). The questionnaire was designed following the structure of a mobility survey, and therefore, tourists were asked about the visited places and attractions during the present and the prior day to the survey. As a result, it is possible to analyse not only the importance of the length of stay but also to assess the choice of visits to attractions depending on the number of days that the tourist had already spent in the city. A first descriptive analysis by means of GIS techniques, as well as the subsequent use of discrete choice regression models unveil distinct patterns related to the most preferred places to visit within the city, the concentration of these visits with regard to time and space, and the degree of sensitivity of these decisions to the length of stay. The results of this paper provide valuable information for urban destination managers to design adequate policies at the local level that favour a balanced distribution of tourists and income throughout the city.
Daniel Miravet (1), Isabel Paulino (1), Aaron Gutiérrez (1)
(1) Universitat Rovira i Virgili
ID Abstract: 620