Assessing the role of public transportation to foster city bike tourism. The case of Italy.

Sustainability issues promote the combination of greener transport means when visiting urban environments. This paper focuses on bike tourists by analysing their choice of cities as a destination and the decision to use public transportation to connect within-destination places during holidays. By using data from an Italian survey on bike tourism in 2020, a bivariate probit model is used to study the role of socio-demographics, bike-related factors, travel characteristics, and cycling and accommodation features. The odds of visiting cities are positively affected by the length of stays, available commercial and bike recovery services, while the negative effect of road traffic is confirmed. Instead, combining bikes with public transportation is more likely for low-cost tourists, mainly lodging in B&Bs, and for people with higher sensitivity to bike-related services. From a transport policy perspective, our results support claims for sustainability measures jointly affecting tourists’ decisions on destinations and travel mode choices.