Spending and length of stay by tourists flying to the Canary Islands (Spain) using low-cost carriers

Abstract

The AIM of this study is to examine and evaluate differences in expenditure and length of stay between tourists who use low-cost carriers and those who travel with full service providers. We consider the statistical dependence between these variables and propose a bivariate distribution that describes tourist expenditure (continuous variable) and length of stay (discrete variable) in terms of their conditional distributions. Covariates are included to reflect the factors that simultaneously affect both variables. In addition, an empirical analysis is made of data obtained by the Canary Islands Tourist Expenditure Survey. The results obtained show that our model achieves a reasonably good fit and that there are differences between LCC and FSC users regarding both expenditure and length of stay, in the use of nonhotel accommodation, as well as differences in expenditure in the case of repeated visits, and in the length of stay according to the visitors’ age, nationality and travel party size.