Digital Tourism Purchasing, Financial Vulnerability and Holiday Deprivation in Europe: Implications for Responsible Marketing

This study examines whether the digitalization of tourism consumption is associated with greater access to holidays in Europe and whether this relationship depends on households’ financial conditions. Using publicly available Eurostat data, the analysis combines a 2023 cross-section of 26 European countries with a complementary pooled panel of 133 country–year observations for 2020–2024. Holiday deprivation is measured as the share of the population unable to afford one week of annual holiday away from home. Digitalization is captured through online tourism purchasing in the cross-section and general online purchasing in the panel. Results show a strong negative bivariate association between digital purchasing and holiday deprivation, but this relationship weakens and becomes statistically imprecise after socioeconomic and connectivity differences are considered. By contrast, perceived debt-repayment burden remains positively associated with holiday deprivation across specifications, while aggregate household leverage does not show the expected moderating effect. The findings distinguish digital market accessibility from economic accessibility: digitalization may facilitate transactions, but the capacity to convert these opportunities into tourism participation remains closely linked to financial conditions. This distinction extends responsible tourism marketing towards the distributive consequences of digital transformation.