EUROPEAN TOURISM: TRENDS AND PATTERNS
According to the European Travel Commission ( ETC) (2007 ), France and Spain are the leading tourist destinations in the EU. In Spain, an interesting trend is the tendency for up to half of tourists to make their own travel arrangements using the internet, which reflects the impact of the low-cost airlines in creating demand for seat-only sales. The ETC noted that the low-cost airlines ’ impact was less pronounced on capital cities than it was on many smaller secondary destinations which have seen major growth. According to the ETC, the scale of tourism growth in 2007 can be gauged from the following facts:
● Europeans made trips 279 million trips abroad (though not necessarily all by air given the large number of land borders in the EU) in 2007
● leisure travel grew at 6 per cent 2006 –2007
● travel patterns were influenced by a strong Euro, improved economic performance across the EU, and the growth in lowcost airlines and cheap flights
● The top eight European markets generated almost two thirds of the total volume of trips (i.e. Germany, UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Switzerland).
THE GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPEAN TOURISM BASED ON AIR TRANSPORT: KEY TRENDS AND IMPACTS
There are two techniques that can be used to address some of these issues surrounding visitor behaviour to understand the geographical patterns of tourism, particularly the nature of tourist flows, so that the scale and extent of tourism can be understood at different scales. The first technique is a simple analysis and mapping of tourism flows between origin and destination countries, to highlight the main flows. At the EU level, the largest tourist flows occur from the UK to Spain whilst the next most important flow is Germany to Spain. Data from airport departures on intra-regional travel (that is travel in and between EU member states) can be modelled to produce Figure 12.2 . This shows the top city-to-city flows of travellers, which are dominated by holiday and business travel. The top ten city –city pairs account for around 50 per cent of all intra-regional travel in the EU. Here the above-mentioned large numbers of flights from the UK and Germany to Spain and the Mediterranean, including business travel, are clearly shown. In addition markets that are near to a land border and a popular destination (e.g. flows from France to Spain) have a strong propensity to use car-based travel, which results in seasonal effects upon the roads and airports in each respective destination area. Even at such a rudimentary level, such patterns begin to explain the seasonal rhythms of tourism, the effect of mass travel on destination areas and the pressure this causes on infrastructure, the environment and people in the resort areas. Research by Eurostat (the European Statistical Agency) on the stability of tourism flows in the EU based on hotel occupancy data shows that tourism is largely concentrated in the June –September months although this does vary by country. These variations therefore highlight the importance of understanding the timing of tourist trips and where they are destined if one is to begin to identify where impacts will occur. This historic pattern for 1999 has changed significantly with the introduction of lowcost airlines which now have almost 20 per cent of the market for air travel in Europe. In 2007, ten of the top 25 low-cost countrypair flows involved the UK. The UK had almost 570 daily low-cost flights serving domestic destinations. This was followed by 366 on the Spain –UK route, 281 on German domestic services and 196 on UK–Ireland flights and 173 on France –UK flights.
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The second more sophisticated method of analysis used to understand how visitors can impact upon destinations through their activities is to study their activity patterns (what they do when, where, for how long and the variations according to market segment). This can utilize the recent advances in information technology made by geographers in terms of the new Geographical Information Systems (GIS). GIS uses sophisticated computer programs, typically the industry standard ArcInfo and variants, to collect data on tourism with a geographical dimension. The geographical elements of the data (i.e. a tourist’s travel pattern and specific activities undertaken at each point on an itinerary) can then be recorded, mapped and modelled to understand how overall patterns of tourist activity exist in a location or region. This was recently undertaken for Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park by Connell (2005) as a basis for establishing the nature and hierarchy of visitor destinations that existed in the Park for the new National Park plan. These destinations could then be used to establish how to manage visitor impacts and what planning mechanisms were needed to cope with seasonal demands. On the basis of such an exercise, we can then begin to identify where particular impacts are occurring as shown in Figure 12.3based on car-based stopping points. We would also be able to identify the geographical patterns of tourism business development, to establish where the main development opportunities exist. The exercise would be useful in identifying what planning measures are needed where and when to constrain or facilitate tourism development and the tools that might need to be used to manage different patterns of visitor behaviour (see Figure 12.4 ). Not surprisingly, many local authority planning departments use such techniques in their daily work but the application to tourism has been quite limited to date. GIS is a powerful, yet greatly under-utilized research tool in tourism. It has an enormous potential application to assist in managing, developing and understanding the dynamics of tourism.
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The integration of different data sources in GIS has a major potential to visually illustrate the dynamics of tourism, and the different impacts that exist, by linking other sources of data together (e.g. records of land degradation, environmental pollution, economic data). This helps us to identify and understand some of the impacts of tourism and where management measures will need to be developed. Therefore, with these issues in mind, attention now turns to the different impacts to understand what relationships exist with tourism, how to measure them and what management tools may be used.
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