The impact of Covid-19 on international tourism flows to Italy: evidence from mobile phone data

Valerio Della Corte, Claudio Doria () and Giacomo Oddo
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Claudio Doria: Bank of Italy

No 647, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This paper analyses the response to the COVID-19 pandemic of inbound tourism to Italy looking at variation across countries and across provinces. To this end, it uses weekly data on the number of foreign visitors in Italy from January 2019 until February 2021, as provided by a primary mobile phone operator. We document a very robust negative relation at province level between local epidemiological conditions and the inflow of foreign travellers. Moreover, provinces with a historically higher share of art tourism, and those that used to be ‘hotel intensive’ were hit the most during the pandemic, while provinces with a more prevalent orientation towards business tourism proved to be more resilient. Entry restrictions with varying degrees of strictness played a key role in explaining cross-country patterns. After controlling for these restrictions, we observed that the travellers that could arrive by their own, private, means of transportation decreased proportionally less. Overall, this evidence emphasises that contagion risk considerations played a significant role in shaping international tourism patterns during the pandemic.

Keywords: International tourism; travel restrictions; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 I15 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-pay, nep-tur and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: The impact of COVID‐19 on international tourism flows to Italy: Evidence from mobile phone data (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_647_21

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