The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on intra- and inter-regional domestic travel: Evidence from Spain

This study empirically compares domestic tourists’ behavior before and after the Covid-19 outbreak. Specifically, official data are used to characterize the travel behavior of residents in Spain who traveled through this country for reasons of leisure, recreation, and vacations in 2019 and 2020. A discrete choice model is employed to unravel the main variables that influence the decision of being an inter-regional traveler. The bootstrap p-value method is used to detect significant changes in the marginal effect of the different variables after the Covid-19 outbreak. The estimation results demonstrate the following: (i) domestic inter- and intra-regional travelers have significant differences and, therefore, policy-makers should not design and implement “one size fits all” policies for domestic tourism; (ii) in addition to socio-economic factors, the regional push-pull factors (e.g., weather) and trip-related characteristics (e.g., type of accommodation) are also important in explaining inter-regional travel decisions; (iii) a high number of Covid-19 infections in the region of origin increases the probability of traveling inter-regionally; and (iv) the Covid-19 outbreak has caused an abrupt shift in domestic travelers’ profiles.