Modeling tourism flows through gravity models: A quantile regression approach

Gravity models are widely used to study tourism flows. The peculiarities of the segmented international demand for agritourism in Italy is examined by means of novel approach: a panel data quantile regression. We characterize the international demand for Italian agritourism with a large dataset, by considering data of thirty-three countries of origin, from 1998 to 2010. Distance and income are major determinants, but we also found that mutual agreements and high urbanization rates in countries of origin are associated with larger flows of incoming tourists.