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High Speed Rail and Tourism

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Tourism, Culture, and Heritage".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2019) | Viewed by 20212

Special Issue Editor

Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Corso Umberto I, 40, 80138 Napoli, NA, Italy
Interests: urban planning; mobility; transportation planning; traffic engineering; transport management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The transportation system and the tourism market can be considered dependent on each other. Indeed, tourists represent a particular category of users, travelling for tourism purpose. An efficient transportation system can be an important component of successful tourism. Specifically, a well connected place, i.e. with a high accessibility, can become an attraction for tourists.

During the centuries, the means of transport have been changing according to the development of technology. Since the origin of railways in Europe during the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 19th century, the speed of passengers trains represented a sign of technological development of the most advanced countries. In 1964 the inauguration of the Shinkansen in Japan in 1964, represented a real breakthrough in transport technologies.

The objective of this special issue is to investigate the relationship between HSR systems and the tourism market. A transport innovation such as a HSR service modifies the relationship between tourists and accessibility because a decrease of travel time can be considered as a decrease of distance. As travel time is one of the components of the total costs borne by tourists, HSR can then decrease the generalized transport costs. The consequence is that HSR can affect the utility of tourists and then the competition between destinations, since the market area can be enlarged. Moreover HSR stations are usually located in city centres, thus HSR can also foster tourism for business purposes.

Therefore, this Special Issue provides a forum to discuss and identify new trends and developments in the relationship between HSR and Tourism, with an emphasis also on the economy of a country, where this service exists, and then on sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Francesca Pagliara
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • State-of-the-art on the relationship between HSR and Tourism (modelling approaches, quantitative, qualitative, etc.).
  • New and original modelling contributions on the analysis of the relationship between HSR and Tourism.
  • Case studies description.
  • Surveys design aiming at investigating the relationship between the tourism and HSR industries. This relationship may also not exists.
  • Big data analytics in the tourism and HSR industries.

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 4566 KiB  
Article
A Regression Tree Approach for Investigating the Impact of High Speed Rail on Tourists’ Choices
by Francesca Pagliara, Filomena Mauriello and Lucia Russo
Sustainability 2020, 12(3), 910; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030910 - 26 Jan 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2647
Abstract
This paper provides a contribution to the international literature by applying regression tree methods to the analysis of the expected effects of the High Speed Rail project in Italy on the tourism market. This approach, as far as the author knows, has never [...] Read more.
This paper provides a contribution to the international literature by applying regression tree methods to the analysis of the expected effects of the High Speed Rail project in Italy on the tourism market. This approach, as far as the author knows, has never been applied in this context. Tourism and transport information have been gathered for 99 Italian provinces during the 2006–2016 period. Tree-structured methods have been chosen as an application of regression models in which some explanatory variables are used as covariates to predict the dependent variable values on the basis of some decision rules. This approach establishes a casual effect between dependent and independent variables. The dependent variables chosen are the Italian and foreign tourists, and the number of overnights spent by Italians and foreigners. Among the independent variables are the presence of HSR, the presence of first-level airport hubs and the number of operating bases of low-cost airlines; among the attractiveness variables are the GDP, the number of attractions in a given province, the presence of the sea, the population and the percentage of unemployment. The main outcome of this study is that HSR affects the tourism market. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Speed Rail and Tourism)
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22 pages, 2263 KiB  
Article
Impact of High-Speed Rail on Cultural Tourism Development: The Experience of the Spanish Museums and Monuments
by Juan Luis Campa, Francesca Pagliara, María Eugenia López-Lambas, Rosa Arce and Begoña Guirao
Sustainability 2019, 11(20), 5845; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205845 - 21 Oct 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3880
Abstract
Although transport infrastructure is one of the prominent factors that make Spain a major tourist destination, the international literature has revealed that the opening of new High-Speed Rail (HSR) lines is not sufficient by itself in order to increase tourist outputs in the [...] Read more.
Although transport infrastructure is one of the prominent factors that make Spain a major tourist destination, the international literature has revealed that the opening of new High-Speed Rail (HSR) lines is not sufficient by itself in order to increase tourist outputs in the new connected destinations. Nevertheless, the roles played by different characteristics of both travelers and destinations are of interest but they still remain not sufficiently explored. This paper focuses on the role played by HSR in fostering cultural tourism by applying a fixed-effect econometric model to a panel database (1988–2017). The database includes the number of tourists to some of the major Spanish cultural centers. The results show different impacts based on the regions, the characteristics of the museums, and the expected tourists. For destinations with previous cultural attraction, a positive effect is more evident. Moreover, the centrality of the HSR station as an enabling factor as well as the growth of the tourist market to the surrounding municipalities has been detected. Another interesting result is related to the cooperation effect between HSR and air transport, which encourages the arrivals of foreign tourists. These findings should help planners to develop policies that optimize tourist revenues by exploiting the potential of HSR development in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Speed Rail and Tourism)
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15 pages, 827 KiB  
Article
Transport Mode Choice by Tourists Transferring from a Peripheral High-Speed Rail Station to Their Destinations: Empirical Evidence from Costa Daurada
by Aaron Gutiérrez, Daniel Miravet, Òscar Saladié and Salvador Anton Clavé
Sustainability 2019, 11(11), 3200; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113200 - 08 Jun 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3343
Abstract
This article analyses the factors that determine the mode of transport (bus, taxi or private car) chosen by tourists for transfers from a peripherally located high-speed rail station to their final destination. The study is based on a survey completed by tourists who [...] Read more.
This article analyses the factors that determine the mode of transport (bus, taxi or private car) chosen by tourists for transfers from a peripherally located high-speed rail station to their final destination. The study is based on a survey completed by tourists who used high-speed rail services to travel to the Costa Daurada, a tourism area on the Mediterranean coast of Southern Catalonia, Spain. The results of this study show that variables associated with the characteristics of the stay had a more decisive influence upon the decisions made by the travellers than the socio-demographic profiles of the tourists surveyed. The availability of direct public transport services for transfers from the station to the final destinations was a much more relevant factor than the cost and duration of the resulting trip. This study provides empirical evidence of the importance of accessibility for peripheral stations. In these cases, good connections via public transport apparently play a key role in both improving tourism development and promoting more sustainable mobility within the region. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Speed Rail and Tourism)
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19 pages, 2372 KiB  
Article
High-Speed Railway and City Tourism in China: A Quasi-Experimental Study on HSR Operation
by Xinshuo Hou
Sustainability 2019, 11(6), 1512; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11061512 - 13 Mar 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5337
Abstract
This paper aims to provide an examination of the general and heterogeneous allowed treatment effects of high-speed rail (HSR) on tourism in cities in China. Based on the implementation of a generalized difference-in-differences (GDID) model and a dose–response (DR) assessment under a quasi-experimental [...] Read more.
This paper aims to provide an examination of the general and heterogeneous allowed treatment effects of high-speed rail (HSR) on tourism in cities in China. Based on the implementation of a generalized difference-in-differences (GDID) model and a dose–response (DR) assessment under a quasi-experimental background, this study found significant evidence of a positive average effect of HSR operation on tourism development for both domestic and international tourism. The event study indicates that the counterfactual method implied in this paper is valid, since the parallel trend assumption is confirmed, and the treatment effect of HSR on city tourism has an upwardly increasing trend over time. The heterogeneity test, which separates large cities from medium-sized and small cities, shows that the effect is quite different for the two city types; the effect is not optimistic for large cities, but it is consistently positive for medium-sized and small cities. As an original contribution, this paper conducts a DR study, allowing heterogeneous treatment effects to be captured when cities have different HSR development statuses. This novel method relaxes the strong assumption that there is only one effect level on average for all cities. The results argue that cities with higher HSR development will enjoy more benefits in terms of arrivals and revenues both from home and abroad; however, there are significant differences for the two city groups, as well as for domestic and international tourism. Thus, the findings can offer important information for policy decision making and serve as a valuable reference for research, especially regarding the conclusion drawn from the heterogeneity effect based on city size and HSR development status. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Speed Rail and Tourism)
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16 pages, 770 KiB  
Article
How Does High-Speed Rail Affect Tourism? A Case Study of the Capital Region of China
by Ping Yin, Francesca Pagliara and Alan Wilson
Sustainability 2019, 11(2), 472; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020472 - 17 Jan 2019
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4350
Abstract
The objective of this study is to analyze the tourism spatial interaction that defines two scenarios, i.e., the actual one with the current high-speed rail (HSR) network, and the future one with an extension of the HSR network, considering as a case study [...] Read more.
The objective of this study is to analyze the tourism spatial interaction that defines two scenarios, i.e., the actual one with the current high-speed rail (HSR) network, and the future one with an extension of the HSR network, considering as a case study the Capital region of China. The impact of HSR on the spatial distribution characteristics is investigated. The main outcome of this study is that the extension of the HSR network in the future scenario will significantly increase the total tourism spatial interaction and will reduce the spatial difference. What this paper adds to the current knowledge about HSR and tourism is that smaller cities, such as Tangshan, Zhangjiakou, and Chengde, connected via HSR to core cities will benefit the most from the HSR network’s operation. Those cities should take the HSR network as a development opportunity to enhance their attractiveness and strengthen their marketing to achieve sustainable tourism competitiveness. The study found that effects can also be registered on larger cities, but they are smaller. So, larger cities, such as Beijing and Tianjin, should reassess their attractiveness to the tourist market and take corresponding countermeasures. The findings of this study can be used by tourism management authorities to develop short-term and long-term plans. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High Speed Rail and Tourism)
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