Physics in tourism: Modeling destination growth

Abstract

Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem of tourist destination saturation or overtourism was a hot research topic among tourism researchers. The debate was focused on the definition and measurement of the phenomenon and on establishing the conceptual models that explain it. The objective of this note is to propose the use of Newton's Second Motion Law to model the growth of destinations and its derivation in potential issues of overtourism. This theory allows to incorporate more adequately relevant concepts in this context such as resistance to growth than other standard theories in the existing literature.