Analyzing impacts of a new rail line on tourist attractiveness using accessibility: the case of the Sud Europe Atlantique high-speed line

This paper proposes an original contribution to measure impact of a new high-speed rail line on tourist attractiveness using accessibility indicator. The case study is based on the Sud Europe Atlantique (SEA) rail line example. The tourism facilities are appreciated by tourist accommodations and two approaches can be considered. The first refers to occasional customers looking for holidays home in a recreational travel and includes “holiday accommodations”. The second approach focuses on second homes, used by their owners on a regular and continuous time for week-ends, holidays or other stays. From a methodological point of view, tourist attractiveness is measured by accessibility indicators and the correlation between accessibility variation and touristic facilities development analyzed by a principal component analysis. By “attractiveness” we refer to accessibility variation by rail mode. The tourist attractiveness is thus measured by a correlation between accessibility indicators and tourist accommodations variations. In rerms of results, a lack of correlation is observed between the positive accessibility variation and the number of holiday accommodations for touristic areas based on outdoor and recreational tourism. The city of Bordeaux is an exception: urban and business tourism is developed as well as the rail modes use. Tourism facilities are clearly correlated with travel gains generated by the high-speed line. The development of second homes is correlated with observed travel time gains only in the southern touristic areas. Others have previously benefit from a previous high-speed rail line since 1989 and the SEA rail line brings only marginal accessibility gains.