Tourism attractiveness in Italy: Some empirical evidence comparing origin-destination flows

This paper aims to model tourism attractiveness for the twenty Italian regions by using origin-destination flows. To this purpose we consider the Italian domestic tourism flows and a wide range of determinants within the theoretical framework referring to the destination competitiveness theories. Using the same set of covariates (selected from Istat and Enac), we propose a comparison between the Gravity model (commonly used in tourism research) and the Bradley-Terry modelling approach (to date not yet used for tourism). Using different model specifications different empirical findings are obtained. Strengths and weaknesses of both modelling approaches will be analysed and explained.