The Assessment of the HSR Impacts on Spanish Tourism: An Approach Based on Multivariate Panel Data Analysis

Literature review shows that little research has done so far to estimate how tourism indicators are affected by new High Speed Rail (HSR) lines. In 2012, a multivariate panel analysis developed by Chen and Haynes was applied to the Chinese regions to quantify the HSR impact on tourism output. The Chinese experience confirmed that, during the period 1999-2010, emerging high speed rail services did have significant positive impacts on boosting tourism in China. Since them, no similar empirical tool has ever been tested in Europe. The aim of this paper is to analyze and validate the suitability of this tool to assess empirically the effects of HSR on Spanish tourism during the period 1999-2014, and to enhance the abovementioned model with a tourism database. With more than 20 years’ HSR experience, and operating the longest HSR network in Europe (2,900 km), Spain offers a good scenario for this model application because Spanish tourism sector represents 10.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP). Results clearly show that there is a direct linkage between the evolution of certain Spanish tourism outputs and the construction of the HSR network. However, authorś recommendations include future new research on some variables limitations like the type of tourism output considered or the consideration of alternative explanatory indicators.