The Impact of Adoption of Information Technologies on International Tourism

Abstract

In this paper, we study the impact of adoption of various information technologies on international tourism. In this study, we use data from 2005 to 2017, a total of 1825 complete observations, from 189 countries to investigate the impact of the adoption of information technologies on international tourism. Information technology variables used in this study include fixed broadband, mobile-cellular phones and internet subscriptions. International tourism in our study includes the number of international inbound tourists (overnight visitors) or number of tourists who travel to a country other than that in which they have their usual residence, but outside their usual environment, for a period not exceeding 12 months. We find that all our information technology variables, except for fixed broadband are positive and highly significant at 0.01%. Having internet access has 20.8% impact on international tourism, whilst mobile-cellular subscriptions has 11.9% impact on international tourism. In order of significance, internet availability in a host country, followed by adoption of mobile-cellular phones are crucial to international tourism in a country. Finally, we also find that the adoption of information technology impacts 86.1%) of international tourism in our data sample. The implications of our results are further discussed.