Analysis of spatial interactions of tourism in Lithuanian-Polish cross-border region using gravity models

Abstract

In the context of cross-border integration, this article analyses the tourism market in counties and municipalities in the Lithuanian-Polish cross-border region. The aim of the research has been to perform analysis of spatial interaction of tourist flows in this region and to evaluate the integration progress in that field. The methods chosen for this purpose comprised a comparative analysis of statistical data, and construction and analyses of two types of gravity models, one for estimation of the potential overnight tourist flows, and the other for the determination of market boundaries of the main centres of tourist attraction in the investigated region. The analysis revealed the asymmetry in tourism development in border regions of those two countries, but the determination of tourism market boundaries testified the ongoing process of integration of the tourism market in this cross-border region. However, using gravitational distance decay function for potential tourists flows modelling from the bigger cities to the resorts appeared to be inappropriate in this research due to the contradiction to the statistical data about the number of overnight tourists and the disability to separate the overnight tourists and one-day visitors in the model.