Common unofficial language, development and international tourism

We employ a gravity framework to examine whether the use of common unofficial language promotes international tourist flows while considering the influence of the levels of development and regions in the underlying relationship. The empirical analysis is based on a panel data set of bilateral tourism flows among 200 countries over the period 1995 to 2015. Results show that common unofficial language is a significant determinant of international tourist flows after controlling for common official language and other classical determinants of tourist flows. This finding holds irrespective of the levels of development of different countries. Further, we show that a common unofficial language is a more significant determinant of international tourist flows than a common official language in Europe. Policies that create an enabling environment for multilingual societies to emerge in a country would help to boost international tourism.