We define two effects of past migration: cultural affinity is
tourists that exhibit a greater propensity to travel to regions that
share some cultural similarities, a trend we measure as a move
ment of tourists in the same direction as past migration flows,
while ethnic reunion is defined as tourists’ propensity to travel to
regions from which their ancestors originate, measured as
a tourism flow in the opposite direction of past migration flows.
Using a standard tourism gravity equation, we find convincing
evidence that both effects are important in explaining interna
tional tourism flows. While past migration may potentially have
an effect on trade, and therefore tourism, we show that its effect is
much larger in tourism, evenwhen trade is used as an explanatory
variable. Existing trade and tourism theories, reviewed above, do
not account for the propensities of tourists e and traders e to
exhibit such strong cultural preferences, influenced by our
measure of past migration patterns. Our results also confirm the
case specific results of an emerging literature which points to the
importance of ethnic reunion and cultural affinity as determinants
in tourists’ decisions when choosing travel destinations. The
benefit of our approach is to show that such traits have global
relevance, even though we also show that the size of their impact
varies by region.
Our approach is less clear about the potential policy prescrip
tions. Are these results evidence that existing tourism marketing
campaigns are already tailored to tourists intrinsic propensity for
cultural affinity, or is there scope for the further exploitation of
tourists propensity to travel to places with cultural similarities? Is
ethnic reunion largely the result of recent migration patterns (first
and second generation citizens), or can “reunion” also occur after
several generations? To answer these questions sufficiently, of
course, micro level evidence of ‘ethnic reunion’ tourists is
required.
This paper shows that tourists have a higher propensity to travel
to regions where they have a greater likelihood to encounter people
that look and act similar to them.We hope that future research will
be able to shed more light