Influence of high-speed rail on the decentralisation of events from big metropolitan areas to smaller intermediate cities

Abstract

International literature on High-Speed Rail (HSR) systems has comprehensively analysed the different socioeconomic impacts derived from the deployment of these infrastructures. The increasing phenomena of business tourism and events organisation in recent years have been identified as potential sources of revenue for cities interested in holding these events. However, few academic studies have identified the factors influencing cities’ location for these business events, such as conferences, meetings and conventions. Our study attempts to fill this gap.The main objective of this manuscript is to evaluate the impact of transport accessibility, especially HSR services, in choosing a city in which to locate an international event in Spain from the perspective of the event planner, focusing on the decentralisation of these kind of events from big metropolitan areas to smaller cities. To achieve this objective, a discrete choice model based on random utility theory has been estimated. The period analysed is 2003–2018; the cities analysed were selected guaranteeing that the panel analysis was heterogeneous, and that it was representative of the main types of cities present in Spain. The results show that besides potential accessibility, HSR provides an additional contribution to the attractiveness of a city as a possible place to locate events, especially small and medium-sized cities. In particular, the model estimation results show that the probability a conference will be organized in a small/medium city with an HSR station is about 21% higher than that of a small/medium city without HSR (in the case of all other variables relating to tourist attraction and meeting facilities being equal), while HSR has contributed to a reduction in international events in big cities.