The Role of Air Transport in Tourism Market Access: A Framework for Capturing Spatial, Temporal and Industry Variability in Air Traffic Flows

Air transport is a vital component in the development of tourism markets, enabling access to regions and facilitating the mobility of tourists worldwide. This chapter presents a framework for analysing spatial, temporal and firm specific air traffic flows in major continental regions of the world. The spatial dimension describes the distribution of air traffic across a system of airports or air traffic communities at national or continental scales. The temporal dimension examines variations in air traffic over a 12-month period and can capture the extent of seasonality in air traffic flows when viewed at a monthly scale, or connectivity when viewed at a daily scale. The industry dimension captures the industry market structure and can be used to assess the performance of the industry at aggregate level, or the extent of competition at individual carrier level. Bringing these aspects together allows for analysis of carrier network dynamics and community air service variability and vulnerability. Metrics for analysing air traffic trends along each of the dimensions, or combinations of dimensions are outlined, and the use of Gini decomposition schemes is proposed. Using Official Airline Guide (OAG) databases, summary comparative analyses of air transport markets in major global regions are presented. Air traffic flows are very much concentrated in space but have become less spatially concentrated in the last 20 years. The variations in seasonality are examined by carrier grouping (full-service carrier, low cost carrier) and individual carrier, as well as by airport and urban area size. The analysis demonstrates that there are significant variations in the extent of seasonality in air traffic flows between the major continental regions. North American air traffic flows show significantly lower seasonality than European markets. Large air transport communities have significantly lower seasonality than small communities. Low cost carriers generally demonstrate a higher degree of seasonal variation in air traffic and these carriers are more likely to service major tourist destinations. The paper concludes with a general discussion of air transport accessibility impacts on tourism markets.