Tourist space and Touristic attraction: An analysis of the destination choices of European travelers

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of inferring and measuring touristic attraction for countries as wholes, based on the observed distribution of tourists among a set of destination countries. Embodied in the research is the understanding that even if it is the distinctiveness of countries that allows them to become touristically important, countries are not unique to the extent that a generalized measure of attraction cannot be derived. The phenomenon of tourism is expressed as constituting a system with a peculiar mode of organization in which attraction varies spatially. Interpreting the data on tourist flows in the Western European/U.S.A. system as resulting from individual expressions of choice/preference for the destination visited, a nonmetric scaling algorithm is used to derive an attraction scale. The significance of the scale is then tested against the hypothesis that the directional bias of tourist flows and the spatial variation in attraction are both functions and expressions of socioeconomic center/ periphery differences.

Keywords:

• space
• center
• periphery
• attraction
• preference
• sealing