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Regional disparities of cultural tourism in Greece
by Panayiotis Drakakis
Abstract ID: 38
Event: Conference 2024
Keywords (up to 5): Cultural tourism, Gini coefficient, Greece, balanced regional development, regional tourism disparities

Cultural tourism constitutes a major form of special interest tourism, considered to be endowed with the capacity to expand the spatial and temporal dispersion of tourism flows. However, the literature regarding the spatial inequalities of cultural tourism activity, and especially from its demand side, is limited. This paper attempts to supplement the small body of relevant literature by examining the spatial distribution of visits to cultural attractions, and the consequent regional disparities, in Greece. Moreover, it seeks to set the regional inequalities of cultural tourism activity against those of total tourism activity. For this purpose, Gini coefficients of cultural tourism demand and tourism demand indicators are employed to make the comparison. The results indicate that all Gini coefficients of cultural tourism activity headed north during the study period (1998–2023), suggesting that it becomes more concentrated over the years. Furthermore, its regional disparities are larger than those of total tourism. The above imply that cultural tourism, in its current spatial pattern, does not contribute to balanced regional development. Policy implications for reducing spatial inequalities in this form of tourism are lastly discussed.

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The International Conference on Business & Economics of the Hellenic Open University (ICBE - HOU) aims to bring together leading scientists and researchers, affiliated with the HOU, to present, discuss and challenge their ideas opinions and research findings about all disciplines of Business Administration and Economics.
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