Dispersal of visitors within destinations: Descriptive measures and underlying drivers

Promoting greater dispersal of tourists and their spending is important to the regional economic development goals of both developed and developing economies. However, while the concept of dispersal is not complex, in practise existing approaches towards dispersal measurement are largely confined to dispersal description (such as dispersal ratios) without the consideration of causal structure. Using Australia as a context, the goal of this paper is to bridge the gap between descriptive and causal approaches to dispersal, using a publicly available, secondary source of data – the International Visitor Survey (IVS). In so doing, the paper empirically validates factors associated with tourist dispersal, and constructs individual dispersal propensities which are structurally linked with, and provide supplementary information to, dispersal ratios. This research shows that, suitably manipulated, existing surveys of international visitors can be a rich source of information about dispersal.

► We aim to bridge the gap between descriptive and causal approaches to dispersal measurement.
► Suitably manipulated, the International Visitor Survey data generate descriptive as well as causal measures of dispersal.
► A causal counterpart to a descriptive measure, the dispersal ratio, is individual dispersal propensity.
► Relationships between dispersal and key factors influencing dispersal have been empirically validated.
► The approach is general and should be of relevance to tourism organisations interested in developing dispersal metrics.