Yes / Low cost carriers (budget airlines) have a significant share of the air travel market, but little research has been done to understand the distributional effect of their operation on key tourism indicators such as length of stay and expenditure. Using data on European visitors to the United Kingdom we demonstrate how counterfactual decompositions can inform us of the true impact of mode of travel. Passengers on low cost carriers tend to spend less, particularly at the upper end of the distribution. Budget airline users typically stay longer, though differences in characteristics of observed groups are important to this result. Counterfactual techniques provide additional valuable insights not obtained from conventional econometric models used in the literature. Illustrating an application of the methodology to policy we demonstrate that enabling respondents to extend their stay generates the greatest additional expenditure at the lower end of the distribution. We also show nationality is a significant characteristic, with important impacts across the expenditure distribution.

Yes / We employ unconditional quantile regression with region of origin fixed effects, whereby we find that attending live football matches significantly increases expenditures by inbound tourist in the UK, and surprisingly we find that such effects are strongest for those who overall spend the least. Higher spending individuals spend significantly more than those who do not attend football matches, even when such individuals are otherwise similar. We analyse the impact of football attendance across the tourism expenditure distribution which is a relatively neglected aspect within previous research.

Yes / The inbound tourist expenditure generating role of football (soccer), particularly the English Premier League 15 (EPL) is evaluated. An enhanced economic and management understanding of the role of regular sporting fixtures emerges, as well as quantification of their impact. Expenditure on football tickets is isolated to identify local economic spillovers outside the stadium walls. Using the UK International Passenger Survey, unconditional quantile regressions (UQR) is used to evaluate the distributional impact of football attendance on tourist expenditures. Both total expenditure and a new measure which adjusts expenditures for football ticket prices are considered. UQR is a novel technique which is as yet underexploited within sport economics and confers important methodological advantages over both OLS and quantile regressions. Significant cross quantile variation is found. High spending football fans spend more, even after ticket prices are excluded. Surprisingly, spending effects owing to attendance are strongest for those who overall spend the least, confirming the role of sport as a generator of tourist expenditure unlike most others. Though the attendance effect is smaller for higher aggregate spenders, there is nevertheless a significant impact across the distribution. Distributional expenditure impacts highlight clear differentials between attendance by high and low spenders. Similar analysis is applicable to other global brands such as the National Football League (NFL) in the United States (American football) and the Indian Premier (cricket) League. The EPL’s global popularity can be leveraged for achieving enhanced tourist expenditure.