Tourism and accessibility: An integrated approach

Abstract

Research into the connection between tourism and public road accessibility raises a rather large number of methodology-related questions. Thus, the authors do not intend to study this connection but our study aims to explore to what extent tourism incomes from accommodation receipts is connected to accessible public roads, or whether it is primarily dependent on the local characteristics of the given regions. Firstly, we analyse the features and components by applying a loglinear model to the tourism regions of Hungary. In the second part of the paper, the authors also intend to estimate, by applying the gravitation model, the extent of domestic multi-day holidays with a comparison of estimated and real values. Through this, the authors attempt to reveal the characteristics of domestic tourist flows in Hungary. This study also indicates no absolute connection between the improvement of accessibility and the increase of tourism-generated incomes. Incomes from international tourism are far more susceptible to favourable accessibility than domestic ones. In the context of the size of incomes, the role of interaction between the regions and accessibility groups is also relevant. For this, the authors conclude that for all four accessibility groups – both domestic and international tourism incomes – at the same regions the multiplier is the highest. The difference was found in the value of multipliers indicating differences among the regions as well as in accessibility between the domestic and international incomes. Based upon the difference between the theoretical and actual tourist flows, we conclude that in the Hungarian context, theoretical flows are somewhat higher compared to actual ones. Among the original planning-statistical regions, primarily their economic development is of decisive importance, thus mainly the role of the Central Hungarian and the Transdanubian regions can be mentioned. Of the tourism-recipient regions, the Budapest–Central Danube Basin region is outstanding. Similarly, positive deviation is seen in the cases of the Lake Balaton, Western Transdanubia and Lake Tisza regions, reflecting possibilities of their development. Conversely, the number of domestic tourists visiting the three East-Hungarian tourism regions is lower than the theoretical value.