The impact of COVID-19 on tourists’ length of stay and daily expenditures

Abstract

This study evaluates the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourists’ length of stay and daily expenditures at a destination. The paper compares detailed microdata for visitors to a Northern Spanish region in the summer periods of 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (after the pandemic outbreak). We estimate the pandemic-induced impacts on the length of stay and expenditures per person for several categories using regression adjustment, inverse probability weighting regression and propensity score matching. We find clear evidence of a drop in the length of stay of around 1.26 nights, representing a 23.8% decline. We also show that, although total expenditures per person and day have remained constant, there has been a change in the allocations for categories in the tourism budget.