A reconsideration of tourism specialization in Europe

Jean-Jacques Nowak (1) , Sylvain Petit (2, 3)

1 RIME-Lab - Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Management et Économie Lab - ULR 7396
2 UPF - Université de la Polynésie Française
3 CRISS - Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Sciences de la Société

Tourism specialization has been studied so far at an aggregate geographical level and by considering tourism as a homogeneous product. The result is a simplistic and stereotypical image of tourism specialization, as for Europe where southern European Union (EU) countries are commonly viewed as highly specialized in tourism services and northern EU countries highly specialized in other activities. The purpose of this article is to provide a method for a deeper analysis of tourism specialization. We study comparative advantages and disadvantages of a sample of 20 European countries over the period 2010–2016 by considering bilateral flows of three different quality tourism services (high, middle, low). Our results show serious differences with those obtained by the traditional approach.

Domaines: Economies et finances

Jean-Jacques Nowak, Sylvain Petit. A reconsideration of tourism specialization in Europe. Tourism Economics, 2020, 27 (8), ⟨10.1177/1354816620937508⟩. ⟨hal-02900225⟩