A double life cycle in tourism arrivals to Spain: Unit root tests with gradual change analysis

Abstract

The Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) theory by Butler (1980) proposes an S-shaped growth trend for the evolution of the number of tourists to a specific tourist destination. According to the data on tourist arrivals in Spain from 1946 to 2015, there may have been one or two life cycles. This paper sets out to test these hypotheses by unit root tests with gradual change. The results confirm that a double S-shaped or bilogistic curve is the long-run equilibrium, thereby validating the existence of two TALCs in the evolution of Spanish tourism. The two logistic curves overlap in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first is characterized by the Spanish tourism boom in the 1960s, while the second illustrates the intense growth from 1995 to 2007, a period of sustained world economic growth.