Beyond administrative boundaries: spatial interdependence, competition, and complementarity across European destination regions

Tourism destinations rarely operate in isolation, yet tourism performance is often analysed within administratively bounded frameworks that overlook spatial interdependence. This study examines spatial patterns of tourism intensity across 229 EU NUTS2 regions over 2017–2024 using a Spatial Durbin Model. The findings reveal persistent positive spatial clustering in tourism intensity, including during the COVID-19 disruption, suggesting that European tourism is shaped by durable spatial structures rather than short-term fluctuations alone. Conditional estimates indicate positive GDP spillovers across the three cross-regional groupings in the baseline specification, although their magnitude differs substantially across regional contexts and their robustness is sensitive to temporal specification during the pandemic period. By contrast, accommodation-capacity specialisation exhibits heterogeneous spillover effects: a significant negative indirect effect consistent with competitive displacement is identified only in the Mediterranean grouping, while indirect effects are statistically insignificant in Continental and Central and Eastern European regions. These findings show that aggregate spatial estimates may conceal context-dependent spillover patterns across European regions and suggest that tourism governance requires stronger regional coordination where destinations are functionally interconnected.