A REGIONAL-ANALYSIS OF TOURIST FLOWS WITHIN EUROPE

The process of regionalization in Europe has attracted little attention in tourist studies, which tend to focus on the comparison between national statistics. By analysing the inter-regional and intra-regional tourist flows within Europe, the geographical pattern of tourist-destination and tourist-generating areas becomes clear and this allows for a realistic assessment of the position and potentials of particular destination areas within the European tourism market, where competition is no longer between countries but between regions. Despite the lack of consensus on the definition of a 'region' and the statistical problems of studying tourist flows on a regional level, the results of this analysis indicate some relevant characteristics of the European tourism market and open interesting perspectives for future research on regional tourism development.