Do implicit prices for hotels and second homes show differences in tourists’ valuation for public attributes for each type of accommodation facility?

Abstract

Tourism accommodation comprises a bundle of private attributes (e.g. star rating, swimming pool or sports facilities) located in a specific physical environment (municipality, in this paper), which embeds public attributes (e.g. natural environment, public safety or cultural heritage). The literature has argued that the price of accommodation takes into account this bundle. Because tourist profiles are likely to be different for different types of accommodation, tourists could value differently the relevant and common public attributes that surround accommodation facilities. Using a database built from brochures of hotels and second homes for 2004 (with prices and private characteristics) in the Costa Brava (Spain), this paper relies on hedonic regressions to clarify the role of both private a location-related attributes for both types of tourism accommodation. We find that the effects on price of some characteristics related to location differ for each type of accommodation. This finding has important implications for private managers and public policy makers in the hospitality industry.